You do not need eggs or special utensils to make pasta at home: semolina and water are enough. The result is delicious.
Sam Wong, in the magazine New Scientist, unveils a very simple recipe to make Italian pasta at home without using machines. In addition, it does not contain egg.
The dough for making homemade pasta is made with white flour and egg yolks. This is one way to make it, but you can also make pasta without flour or eggs, and you don’t need any special apparatus to prepare it.
DURUM WHEAT SEMOLINA
In addition, most Italian pastas are made with flour from a different variety of wheat than found in supermarkets. Triticum durum thrives in dry regions of southern Italy.
The grains appear glassy and when ground tend to break into pieces, rather than becoming fine particles like flour. This produces semolina, which has a coarse sand-like texture. It gets its yellow color from carotenoid pigments.
The grains appear glassy and when ground tend to break into pieces, rather than becoming fine particles like flour. This produces semolina, which has a coarse sand-like texture. It gets its yellow color from carotenoid pigments.
However, when you make pasta with finely ground common flour, more starch escapes during cooking, causing the pasta to become sticky. The starch in the flour also absorbs more water, which isn’t desirable if you’re making dry pasta, as it means it takes more energy to dehydrate it.
When pasta is made with white flour, egg is usually added to the dough. This provides color and richness, as well as extra protein, which offers volume and texture. But the egg also makes pasta more perishable, so it is mainly used for fresh pasta.
Durum wheat is high in protein, which means pasta holds its shape well when cooked and tastes good.
HOW TO PREPARE HOMEMADE ORECCHIETTES
Ingredients for two servings:
- 250 g semolina
- 125 ml water
Elaboration:
Orecchiette (small ears, pictured), are a type of pasta made with fresh semolina in Puglia, Italy. To make the dough, add the water to the grits in a bowl and mix with a fork. Once combined, pour on a work surface and knead for about 8 minutes, until soft, elastic and not sticky. Cover it with a cloth and let it sit for about 30 minutes.
Then give roll shape to the dough with a diameter of 1.5 cm. Using a butter smear knife (without edge or teeth), cut it into pieces 1 centimeter wide and, as in this video, stretch them on a wooden board sprinkled with semolina, so that they do not stick. Then turn each piece over.
Place the orecchiette on a tray. Let them dry a little, for at least an hour. Then they are ready to cook, or they can be left to dry completely for a day or two.
Cook them in salted water for 6 minutes or more, depending on how long it was allowed to dry. When the pasta is cooked to your liking, drain it and mix it with the sauce.
