I Made Pasta without a Pasta Machine

Stand Mixer Pasta

I made pasta with a stand mixer and a rolling pin and I broke a sweat doing it.

This can be done. It probably shouldn't be done. After an hour of struggling with pasta and a rolling pin with the pasta constantly rebounding and the rolling pin coming apart, you will realize the pasta machine might not be required for home pasta production but it's required for your sanity.

I used the Bon Appetit pasta recipe and added some water to get it workable. I had a different plan for the pasta dough. The original plan got scrapped so the dough turned into dinner.

The original recipe at Bon Appetit is superbly basic eggs, flour, oil, salt. It never occurred to me that I could just throw it all in my mixer and let that do the work. I am unconvinced whether this is a better method than doing it from start to finish by hand.

When working with a dough by hand, there's room to change the recipe in the moment when it's not working.

There's nothing wrong with the Bon Appetit recipe. I got a good dinner out of it. It's just the wrong recipe for me.

I would like to try again with flavors or colors incorporated into the dough. But I'm not ready to invest in a pasta machine.

How to Fix your Dough when it feels like everything is going wrong

Hard to the point of inspiring rage? Wet the dough a bit and knead in the water.

Sticky? Dust the counter with flour and knead it.

Don't overcorrect. Just add a little. A dash or a drop.