How to make pasta, Bologna style

Tonight our host, Federico, taught us how to make traditional Bologna style pasta. So now, I'm going to teach you.

Here in Emilia-Romagna they use special eggs that are extra yellow. All the pasta in this region is traditionally yellow. It is a result from feeding the chickens maize.

He started out by mixing seven eggs with 600 grams total of durum wheat flour and regular wheat flour. You can also substitute the durum with buckwheat or chestnut flour, or put minced spinach or herbs in to change the color. He used the electric mixer and then kneaded the dough.

He had a square wooden board (about 2 1/2 feet wide) and a wooden roller just as long. He started to roll out the dough into a circle, turning the dough and rolling it out more.

When it thinned out and started to get sticky, he sprinkled more flour on, spread it around and did the same thing on the other side.

The next step was to make the dough even thinner. He rolled it around the pin little by little, and pressed his palms down and out as he was rolling, so the dough would spread lengthwise.

Here's a video of that step, because it's hard to explain.

Making pasta from Renee Orenstein on Vimeo.

Federico said that an old Italian lady from the area taught him how to make pasta. So many of his sentences started out with, "The old lady says..." He told us that, "the old lady says the pasta is ready when your ass is sweaty." Obviously it takes some sweat of the brow to make sure the pasta is good.

When the dough is very thin (almost see-through) and starts to crack on the edges, it's ready to be made into the pasta. We made tagliatelle, which is the flat, wide noodles, but the dough can be used for tortelloni, tortellini, ravioli, etc.

Once the dough was thin enough, he used a hair dryer to make sure the moisture was out (he told me not to include this part about using a hair dryer, but I thought it was funny). Then after it was dry, he rolled the dough up by hand and cut strips of the roll with a knife.

He unrolled the strands and put them into piles on a screen so they could dry more. You can save the pasta for about a day, but if you want to keep it longer, you should freeze it.

Then you just throw it in some boiling water and it cooks very quickly. Old lady says, when it rises to the top of the pot, the pasta is almost ready.