How to Make Homemade Pasta During Quarantine

You need very few ingredients to make the best pasta you've ever tasted

We all want to return to many pre-pandemic aspects of life—visiting friends, anxiety-free grocery shopping and showering on a regular basis before 4pm. But once you taste delicious, silky and chewy homemade pasta, you won’t want to return to the store-bought, dried pasta of yesteryear (February).

Homemade pasta does require more time to make than store-bought but not as much as, say, bread (which we’re all making). If you have kids, farm the pasta making out to them. They’ll have fun while keeping busy and you’ll have pasta for dinner.

Below are two recipes: one with eggs and a vegan version with puréed pumpkin.

Recipe No. 1: Egg pasta

The short version of the recipe

Combine 1/2 cup white flour and 1/2 cup semolina flour. Make a well in the center and crack two large pastured eggs into it. Mix eggs and flour and form a ball. Knead for about seven minutes. Rest for several minutes. Roll out into a very thin rectangle. Roll the rectangle up in to a tube. Slice off noodles. Cook in boiling salted water for two minutes. This will feed about two people.

The long version with lots of pictures…

For this recipe, I used half all-purpose flour, half semolina. You can use 100 percent all-purpose. It makes delicious pasta. I think the semolina tastes even better. You can’t go wrong with either one though. I use unbleached all-purpose flour, not 00. I don’t have anything against 00, I just don’t usually stock it in my pantry.

Or, use a pasta machine…

Fresh Pasta

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/2 cup semolina flour

• 2 large eggs

1. Combine flours in a bowl and make a well in the middle. Crack two eggs into it. If you are more coordinated than I, do all of this directly on the wooden surface you’ll knead the dough on.

2. With a fork or your hands, mix the eggs and start tossing in the flour from the sides toward the middle. Continue mixing in the flour until you have a shaggy dough.

3. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead for about seven minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic. As you knead, add more flour to your work surface as necessary. You don’t want sticky dough. If you make bread, this dough will seem much more stiff. That’s what you want.

4. Let the dough rest for 10 to 20 minutes. At this point, I’ll start cleaning up a bit as I wait.

5. Divide the dough into two equal portions. The smaller portions make the dough easier to work with.

6. Roll out the first portion as thinly as you can (about 1 mm) into a rectangle, more or less. Dust with flour as necessary as you continue to roll out the dough thinner and thinner. You don’t want it sticking to your rolling pin or your work surface.

7. Dust with more flour if necessary and roll up into a log.

8. Slice the log into (roughly) equal portions.

9. Unwind your noodles. That’s it! You’ve made your own pasta.

10. If you’re not cooking right away, toss the noodles with more flour and turn handfuls into nests. Let them rest for about half an hour to dry out a bit or store them in the refrigerator in a glass jar for up to two days.

11. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt to a large pot of water and bring to a boil. Add the pasta and cook for two minutes or so, drain, and toss with whatever topping you like. Sometimes I’ll simply toss my pasta in olive oil, wedges of tomatoes from the farmer’s market and sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper. So simple yet so tasty.

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Recipe No. 2: Fresh Pumpkin Pasta

For this recipe, I used white flour, semolina and pumpkin purée. You can also use squash or carrot purée. (Click here for how to cook a whole pie pumpkin in a pressure cooker in minutes.)

If you use a pasta machine, roll the dough a little thicker than usual. I stop at 5 or 6. If don’t have a pasta machine, roll the dough out thinly, roll it up into a log and slice off noodles (see the egg pasta above). Or make shapes by hand. I use my gnocchi board to make small spiral shapes. If you would like to make the spirals but don’t have a gnocchi board, roll the shapes off the back of the twines of a fork.

After you’ve formed several of these shapes, you’ll get the hang of it and the meditative work goes quickly.

Fresh Pumpkin Pasta

Serves 3 to 4

Ingredients

• 1 cup white flour plus more for kneading and shaping

• 1 cup semolina flour

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 cup pumpkin or squash purée

Directions

1. Combine flour, semolina and salt in a bowl. Make a well in the center and add the pumpkin purée. Mix together with a fork as well as you can.

2. Use your hand to incorporate the remaining flour.

3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 7 minutes, until smooth and elastic.

4. Let dough rest for 20 to 30 minutes.

5. Shape the dough into desired shapes.

6. Boil in a pot of generously salted water for 1 to 2 minutes or until al dente (tender but firm to the bite).

7. Drain immediately in a colander, toss with your favorite sauce and serve.

Buon appetito!