How to Make Homemade Pasta: Fresh Pasta Dough Recipe

To make great homemade pasta, you'll need the following ingredients on hand.

1. 1. Flour: In Italy, pasta is made with doppio zero (aka type "00" or pasta flour). This style of wheat flour is very finely milled, and it tends to be more elastic than other flours. If you can't find doppio zero flour, you can substitute all-purpose flour or coarse semolina flour, though the texture may be less delicate.
2. 2. Eggs: The eggs in fresh pasta help bind everything together. They're also what gives pasta that beautiful golden hue. Use high-quality, fresh eggs for the best flavor.
3. 3. Olive oil: A little bit of olive oil can make your pasta dough smoother, but too much will give you mushy pasta.
4. 4. Salt: When it comes to homemade pasta dough, salt is really just for flavor. Add a pinch to the dough, and remember to cook your pasta in well-salted water.

Making pasta by hand, as Italians have done for thousands of years, is relatively easy and involves only about a half-hour of active working time.

1. 1. Make the dough right on the countertop. You can also use a marble cutting board or other clean, cold work surface. Start with a mound of flour, make a well in the center, and add the wet ingredients to the well.
2. 2. Mix the ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients together, either with a fork, whisk, or your fingers. Slowly incorporate the flour until you're left with a shaggy dough. Kneading the dough by hand—rolling, pressing, and punching it on the work surface—will turn the coarse dough into a smooth, shiny ball. You'll need to commit to 10–15 minutes of hand kneading to activate the gluten in the dough.
3. 3. After letting the dough rest, it's time to roll. You can do this with a long rolling pin and a sharp knife or pizza cutter, but, depending on the type of pasta you're making, there are some additional tools that can help you. A hand-cranked pasta roller will turn out uniform sheets of pasta, while a chitarra (a device that with strings that looks like the fretboard of a guitar) will cut through rolled pasta dough to make fettuccine or linguine. Ravioli, lasagna, pappardelle, and tagliatelle are all good options if this is your first time making pasta, since they don't require any special tools.

A stand mixer can be a great pasta-making companion.

1. 1. Mix the dough. Create a mound of flour with a well in the center, and add the wet ingredients to the well. Mix with a fork or your fingers, gradually working the flour into a shaggy dough. For easier clean-up, mix the dough with your hands directly in the bowl of the stand mixer.
2. 2. Knead the dough with the stand mixer. If you mixed the dough on the counter, use a bench scraper to transfer the dough to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. You can then let the stand mixer do the kneading for you. On low speed, it will still take about 10 minutes for the dough to achieve a smooth, elastic texture.
3. 3. Roll out the pasta dough. If your stand mixer has a pasta machine attachment, you can also use it to roll out your dough. After letting the dough rest, give it a quick roll with a rolling pin so that it will fit the width of the pasta machine. Lightly flour your pasta machine and the back of your hands. Position the machine at one end of your workspace, giving the dough plenty of room to stretch. Starting with the machine on its widest setting, feed the rolled out pasta dough into the machine. When it’s halfway through, pull it out. Repeat two or three times on the widest setting, until you have a sheet with uniform thickness. You can then gradually decrease the thickness of your pasta sheet until the sheet of pasta has reached the desired thickness. Some pasta attachments include pasta cutters that will cut pasta sheets into perfect ribbons.

You can use fresh homemade pasta instead of dried pasta in any pasta recipe. For the best flavor, cook your fresh pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water until just al dente, then use tongs to place the pasta directly in the sauce.

If you really want to taste your efforts, stick to simple sauces, like pesto, browned butter and sage, or cacio e pepe. Homemade pasta dough is also the best way to experience filled pastas like ravioli and agnolotti, since fresh fillings like ricotta cheese don't hold up to drying or freezing.

Fresh pasta has a short shelf life, but for cut pastas, like fettuccine, you can either air-dry or freeze the pasta. You can buy special pasta drying racks, or you can dry strands in little nests on a baking sheet. Homemade dried pasta will keep in an airtight container for up to one month. You can also freeze pasta on a sheet pan and then transfer it to an airtight container or plastic bag. Frozen pasta will keep for up to two weeks and does not need to be defrosted before cooking.