Homemade Fresh Pasta Dough Recipe

How to make it

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• Mixing the dough
• Combine flour and salt. Form a mound and create a well. Add oil and slightly beaten eggs into the well. Gradually mix the flour to the eggs and oil. Hand mix in a small amount of water if needed. Knead dough to desired constancy. Add flour if the dough sticks to your hands. Cover kneaded dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least ½ hour.
• Divide dough into about 3" x 2" pieces. Dust the dough with flour on both sides if the dough is too sticky. Start thick and gradually crank to desired thinness. After the first pass through the machine, fold the dough in half to help develop the glutten. To make good straight edges, fold the ends of pasta sheet to the center and then rotate it 90º so that the folded edges are on the sides.
• Preparing the dough with a hand crank pasta machine.
• As soon as you cut the pasta, either place on a floured flat surface or hang on a pasta drying rack. This type of fresh pasta will stay fresh in the refrigerator for a few days, or it can be air dried on your pasta rack and then stored in an air tight container. Fresh pasta can also be frozen in a vacuum bag and used as gifts, or to be used for a rainy day. Do not keep dried fresh pasta out because of the eggs in the mixture.
• Cooking Hand Made Pasta
• Drop the pasta into a large pot of salted boiling water and boil until tender or "al dente" for about two to four minutes. Do not over-cook the pasta to a mush. Drain well and serve.
• Other Flavors of Pasta:
• For Tomato Basil flavored pasta, add 3 tablespoons of tomato paste and 2 tablespoons of either finely chopped fresh or dried basil into the mix.
• For Spinach flavored Pasta, add 4 to 6 tablespoons of cooked pureed spinach to the dry mix. Blended/Pureed spinach will help prevent the pasta from sticking to each other in the Hand Crank Pasta machine. Spinach adds moisture to the dough, so you will have to add some of the reserve flour to the dough until it is no longer sticky.
• For Whole Wheat, substitute ½ to 1 cup of whole wheat flour to the mix.