It has been on my list since we moved to SaltSpring and decided to “make” life happen to had make our own pasta.  German by heritage, this is not a skill I was ever taught (or that comes naturally to me)

And my British husband, who can toss together a mean Yorkshire pudding, has no experience in the pasta field either.

And then I attended that Bridgestone event in Denver and for dinner one night we did master chef and had to “make” a pasta dish.

And then I realized, “Hey, this pasta thing doesn’t seem too bad” and thought I would give it a whirl.

So, what DID I know about making pasta?

I knew it needed to “rest” (but wasn’t sure how long) so I gave myself 4 hours on a sunday to make it.

I knew it needed to be thin . .  but that’s what that nifty Kitchen Aid pasta attachment is for, right?

And that’s all.

I used the basic 2cups of flour:3 eggs (and a pinch of salt) recipe.  Plopping the eggs in my little flour mound and mixing them up, “incorporating” them into the flour.  And it got messy. And really DRY.

I was supposed to mix and knead, but it was so dry it would hardly “Incorporate”

So, I added another egg.  A little one this time!

That seemed to do the trick and I was able to blend the dough in nicely.  Next on the list was to knead for 10 minutes.

TEN MINUTES?
I think I must have missed one of the uses for my mixer as I am SURE I can do this with a machine, but instead I will stand here grinding my hands into this dense mass of dough.

For TEN MINUTES.

(as a note here, I didn’t make it 10 minutes. In fact, I am not sure I could do ANYTHINg for 10 minutes without some form of other entertainment)

And then, we rested. The dough and I rested, that is.

We had been given the handy dandy “smoosher” attachment with the mixer as well, so I grabbed a ball of dough and stuffed it into the smoosher attachment.

Which didn’t work by the way.

90 minutes later it was STILL working its way through smooshing down my lump of pasta dough. At this point I had multitasked and made cream cheese icing for my carrot cake and then closed all the doors to the kitchen to block out the noise.

Then I gave up.

I removed the un-flatted lump of dough and the 2 inches that were flattened and proceeded to roll it out myself. I rolled, and then tried to flatten, but alas I had not rolled thin enough.

So I rolled again. Then moistened, then rolled, and that bloody dough was so springy it just kept bouncing back at me.  At this point I wondered if it was the extra egg I had used. Did that extra bantam egg cause ALL these problems?

Then Hubby came in.  He wanted to see the pasta.

I laughed, and cried a little. He poured me wine.

He suggested I make the dough thinner before I use the attachment.

I threw the rolling pin at him.

He rolled, and rolled. He complained about the rolling pin, suggested we get a better one.

He rolled it so thin we could see through it, and then we made fettuccine.

And the fettuccine was delicious, and totally not worth the 4 hours we had to put into making it. Nor the headache I got from listening to my mixer on high for that duration.

It also cost us 2 bottles of wine to deal with the stress.

In future what will we do?  We will roll it thinner ( IF THAT IS EVEN POSSIBLE)

It was delicious though and had we known then what we know now I am confident that the process would have been more positive for all involved, including our poor Kitchen Aid mixer who was severely over worked for a measly 3 cups of pasta.

A delicious, home made 3 cups though.