Only once before have I attempted to make fresh pasta. I wasn't aiming for anything fancy--just a basic filled pasta. Ravioli with mushrooms or whatever. I didn't get to the filling stage. I had one disaster after another. I tried making it on the bench, as all the old recipes say to do, and I ended up with egg whites running everywhere. The clean-up job was a bitch. I managed to get something resembling a dough, though, and rested it and fed it through my pasta roller ... and watched as it fell apart. Horrible.
I wasn't super excited to have to make fresh pasta again. Perhaps I was even a little scared. I could see egg running everywhere and me having to head down to the supermarket to buy a packet of the dried, 'no-cook' stuff to make tonight's lasagne.
This time I ignored the advice about mixing the eggs into the flour on a bench. I used a large bowl. The plan was to mix the ingredients until I had a workable dough and then to start messing around on the table. I mean, if you can make the dough in a food processor, what's wrong with using a bowl instead of a bench?
The dough is fairly standard. 500 grams of flour (I used '00' flour). 5 eggs (I ended up using 6--after 5 the dough was still really dry, wasn't holding together so well). 2 tablespoons of olive oil. A pinch of salt. I've read somewhere, I'm sure, that you shouldn't put oil in pasta. Maybe heard it, even, on MasterChef or something. Maybe I've also heard something about not putting salt in there. I don't know. As with most recipes that require both flour and eggs, this is one Larousse Gastronomique formula I'll not stray too far from. Worst case: if the pasta is mediocre I can always follow someone else's dough recipe next time given that I've already knocked over Larousse's.
A few minutes of kneading saw the dough come together nicely. I split the dough into four portions and kneaded them into the wee balls you see. I then covered the balls in cling film and threw them in the fridge. There they shall wait until tonight.
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