Spare Spoons Kitchen
Homemade Pasta Dough
Tender egg pasta made the low-effort way — weigh the wet right in the mixer bowl, let the dough hook knead it for you, then roll and cut. A splash of olive oil makes it a little more tender than most. Roll it for fettuccine or pappardelle and toss it with any of the pasta sauces here.
Ingredients
Easier, if you like
- No stand mixer? Make a flour well on the counter, pour the wet (and oil) into the middle, and pull the flour in with a fork; then knead by hand about 10 minutes until smooth. Rest the same way.
- No pasta roller? Roll each piece out by hand with a pin as thin as you can on a floured counter, let the sheets dry a few minutes, then fold and slice into wide ribbons — pappardelle is the forgiving shape to cut by hand.
Method
Cook's notes
Provenance: adapted from Helen Rennie's pasta dough — her egg-rich formula of 300 g flour to 185 g wet (2 whole eggs + 3 yolks, topped up with water) — with my own practically-no-knead mixer method and a little olive oil added on top of the wet for a more tender bite.
Why the oil: fat coats the flour and limits gluten development, so the cooked pasta is a shade more tender and less chewy. Ten grams in 185 g of wet is plenty; more and the dough gets slack.
The 185-gram trick: weighing the eggs and water together to a fixed weight is what makes the dough consistent batch to batch — egg sizes vary, the total doesn't.
Don't over-rest. An hour on the counter hydrates the flour and relaxes the gluten so it rolls without snapping back; overnight in the fridge is fine, but much longer and it discolors.
Flour: I use bread flour — the higher protein makes a sturdy, springy noodle that stands up to rolling and the long mixer knead. All-purpose works fine too; “00” or pasta flour gives a silkier sheet, and a little semolina adds bite.
Toss it with: the pesto, the Bolognese, the fettucine al limone, or the goat cheese & lemon pasta — any of the pasta sauces here.
Notes on vegan and gluten-free
Vegan: this is an egg dough, so there's no simple swap — an eggless semolina-and-water pasta is a different recipe (and a different texture).
Gluten-free: tricky, since the gluten is what makes it roll and stretch; a 1:1 GF flour blend with a little xanthan gum will work but stays more delicate — handle it gently and roll a touch thicker.