Gordon Ramsay’s Homemade Pasta Dough Recipe
Written by MasterClass
Last updated: Dec 20, 2024 • 4 min read
Making your own pasta dough can be intimidating—but it’s extremely satisfying. Chef Gordon Ramsay says, “If it’s a ravioli or a tortellini, lasagna, cannelloni, tagliatelle, spaghetti—whatever you want, that dough is the base. That is it. That’s your passport to great Italian dishes.”
Follow Gordon’s cooking tips for making fresh pasta dough, and you’ll leave the boxed stuff behind forever. You’ll need a rolling pin, a manual pasta maker, a lot of flour, and a lot of patience.
If you love making pasta, a pasta machine will become one of your essential kitchen tools. They are inexpensive and easy to use. Gordon uses one with a hand crank. All machines have different thickness settings. The thickness of your pasta sheet will depend on the type of pasta you’re ultimately making.
Learn From the Best
Chef Gordon Ramsay’s Tips for Making the Perfect Pasta
Making pasta dough can be an intimidating process. Here are Chef Gordon Ramsay's tips for making pasta:
- Pick the right work space: Where you make your pasta matters. "Making pasta is important on a cold surface," he says. Marble is a good option.
- Understand the right consistency: Too much flour and not enough flour can both negatively affect your results. To better understand what you're trying to achieve, Chef Ramsay suggests feeling your pulse. "When you take your pulse it's the same kind of texture that you're looking for on that pasta," he says. "Too much flour, it's gonna be dry. Too little flour, and the pasta's gonna be wet. Therefore, when we start running it through the machine it'll actually stick, but every thirty seconds needs a light sprinkling." Remember you can always add flour, but you can’t take it away.
- Keep extra flour on hand: Flour is essential for the entire pasta-making process. "To you, [a touch of pasta on your fingers] looks a mess," he says. "To me, that's a portion. I want to make sure [to] season the hands with the flour and rub. You'll see your hands get really nice and clean." You can also lightly flour your machine before you feed the dough through every time to prevent it from sticking. Make sure to lighlty cover your hands (both backs and palms)—as well as your surface—in flour.
- Avoid washing the pasta machine: As Chef Ramsay says, "Never wash this machine, by the way. If you wash this machine, you're in trouble because it's bad for the pasta inside."
Gordon Ramsay’s Homemade Pasta Dough Recipe
makes
prep time
10 mintotal time
30 minIngredients
Equipment:
Step 1: Make the pasta dough
- 1
Put 00 flour onto a cold surface and use a fork to form a well in center. Season the center of the well with salt and add olive oil.
- 2
Crack eggs into bowl and gently whisk together.
- 3
Add a third of whisked eggs into well.
- 4
Use the fork to gradually incorporate flour into the eggs.
- 5
Once mostly soaked in, add another third, continuing to mix into the flour, careful not to let eggs slide out.
- 6
Create another well in the middle of the flour and egg mixture and add the remaining egg, combining until the dough looks like crumbs.
- 7
Once all the egg is incorporated, flour your hands and begin forming a ball. Continue to flour your hands and knead the ball of dough until firm and elastic, turning and twisting the ball for about 10 minutes.
- 8
Wrap in plastic wrap and rest for at least 20 minutes before rolling.
Step 2: Roll the pasta
Note: Gordon is rolling the pasta thin enough to make ravioli with a cooked filling. If you are making another type of pasta, or ravioli with raw filling, you will roll to a different thickness. Learn about the many pasta shapes you can make in our complete guide here.
Watch Gordon demonstrate how to roll pasta here.
- 1
Unwrap your pasta dough and place it on a clean, cool, dry working surface, like marble.
- 2
Lightly flour everything—your hands, the surface, the board, the pasta dough. This protects the pasta and helps you stretch it very thin. But be careful. Too much flour will ruin your dough. Remember: You can always add flour, but you can’t take it away.
- 3
Start rolling the dough with the dowel or rolling pin. Roll it out to the width of your machine.
- 4
Lightly flour your pasta machine and the back of your hands. Position the machine at one end of your workspace, so that you still have a clear workspace to aerate and stretch the dough.
- 5
Starting with the machine on its highest setting, feed the rolled out pasta dough into the machine. When it’s halfway through, pull it out. When you’ve run it all the way through the machine, pull it out and aerate the dough. Repeat 2 or 3 times on the first setting. Lightly flour your hands each time.
- 6
Using the back of your hand, fold the dough. Then change the setting on your pasta machine to 1.
- 7
Crank the dough through the machine. After 10 turns of the machine, catch the dough and stretch and fold the dough. Change the setting on your machine to 2 and repeat.
- 8
Repeat 10 times, flouring your hands and increasing the setting each time, until your pasta is smooth and as thin as tracing paper. Your pasta sheet may reach 10+ feet long, so call in assistance if you need it!
Become a better chef with the MasterClass Annual Membership. Gain access to exclusive video lessons taught by culinary masters, including Gordon Ramsay, Gabriela Cámara, Chef Thomas Keller, Yotam Ottolenghi, Dominique Ansel, Alice Waters, and more.