How to make pasta with one hand behind your back

About two years ago, Matt got into making pastas from scratch and he is a natural. He had an instinctive delicate touch to making pastas, even filled ravioli. We bought an Imperia pasta machine, and he was away.


Matt did a cooking course a few weeks ago with celebrity chef Valentina Harris, and she taught him a few tweaks that have improved his pasta making practice.


Here is how to make pasta from scratch. This is just the tips and techniques for the dough. We will go into more info on cutting, shaping ad sauces in another blog post:

Basic pasta dough for two

• 200 grams flour (50 % semolina flour and 50 % plain flour)
• 2 eggs

The basic rule of thumb is one egg per person, and about 100 grams of the flour mixture per egg. I also asked about flour strength. Matt said to use normal plain flour. You only use strong flour for breads. Also you need semolina flour, not semolina.

Make a well out of flour. Whisk eggs in separate bowl.

In go the eggs. Note the butter knife on the left here. That is there for a reason.

One hand behind the back. Show off.

The reason he keeps his hand behind his back is so he's not tempted to use it, so he can keep one hand clean. It reminds me of eating in Morocco.

The next stage is to just keep working in the egg and to form a dough. 

You just need patience here and eventually it starts coming together.

Mmm dough. Are you ready? Here comes the knife. Not the Swedish band, the butter knife. 

Scrape off all that doughy goodness.

It's starting to look like a ball now. What you are looking at is science. The kneading of the flour and the egg forms gluten, and creates elasticity in the dough. You can test this elasticity in action by pressing a finger in the dough. When the pasta is 'ready' the elasticity will cause the dough to gradually spring back so the finger mark almost disappears

Once the pasta springs back, Valentina recommends 'resting' the pasta for 30 mins before you start to cut it. Simply wrap in cling film and leave on the bench for about half an hour and you're ready to roll.

Nice dough ball

We did take photos for Part 2 of this tutorial, however our camera memory card corrupted so we lost them all, sadly. We will make pasta again soon and share the rest of the tips that Valentina gave Matt on how to roll pasta.