Homemade Pasta

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• semolina flour
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp kosher salt

Method

Pasta dough is built on the fountain method — flour walls contain egg until they're breached, and your fork becomes the perimeter guard. Mound 300g plain flour on a clean counter (not a bowl — you need room to work). Create a well in the centre large enough to hold 3 eggs, 1 tablespoon olive oil, and 1 teaspoon salt without spilling. This isn't theatre; the well prevents a runny mess spreading across your work surface. Crack the eggs directly in, add the oil and salt, then attack with a fork, breaking the yolks and beating the wet ingredients as if making omelette. The fork gradually drags flour from the inner walls into the pool. Once the mixture reaches a shaggy, half-integrated state, abandon the fork and use a bench scraper to fold the dry flour over the wet centre repeatedly, rotating the mass as you go. You'll feel the dough consolidate. This is the dough-making stage — stop when you have a rough, craggy mass that still has dry streaks. It doesn't need to be homogenous yet.

Now kneading proper: use the heel of your hand to push the dough away from you, fold it back, rotate 45 degrees, repeat. This develops gluten structure — the protein network that gives pasta its bite. After 10 minutes the dough will feel noticeably smoother and more elastic; it should spring back slightly when you poke it. Wrap it tightly in cling film and rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. The dough-rest allows the gluten to relax and the flour to fully hydrate, making the next stage — rolling — far less rageful.

Dust your work surface lightly with semolina (not flour — semolina's grittier texture prevents sticking without being absorbed). Roll the dough to roughly A4-sheet thickness, then fold it in thirds lengthways, rotate 90 degrees, and roll again. Repeat this lamination five times. Each fold-and-roll thins the dough evenly and develops additional layering. On the sixth pass, roll until nearly translucent; you should see your hand through it. Cut immediately into ribbons — fettuccine, pappardelle, whatever width suits you — and toss each batch with semolina to prevent agglutination.

Cook in salted boiling water. Fresh egg pasta will float within 30 seconds and needs only 90–120 seconds more — test at 90 seconds by breaking a piece; it should offer slight resistance at the centre but no chalky bite. The water-soluble starch on the surface gelatinises rapidly; overcooked fresh pasta collapses into paste.