Recipe: How to Use a Manual Pasta-Rolling Machine

How to Use a Manual Pasta-Rolling Machine
Source: How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food
by Mark Bittman

A manual machine is easy to use. You clamp it to the counter and pass the dough through a pair of rollers, making them successively narrower with each pass. The first few passes finish working the dough for you, making it perfectly smooth and elastic. The last few make the pasta thinner and thinner, until the sheets are all but translucent. Here are step-by-step guidelines.

Make the pasta dough by hand or in a food processor; it should be slightly sticky but smooth. If time allows, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for one to twenty-four hours.

Clamp the machine to a counter, and sprinkle a nearby surface lightly with flour. Have more flour ready.

Cut off about one sixth of the dough; wrap the rest in plastic while you work.

Roll the dough lightly in the flour, and flatten it a bit with your hands,

Set the machine to "1" and crank the dough through. ii it sticks, dust it with a little more flour.

Set the machine to "2" and pass the flattened dough through again. Repeat. setting the machine to a higher number with each successive pass. If at any point the dough sticks or tears, bunch it together and start again. You will quickly get the hang of it. Use as much flour as you need to, but no more than necessary or the dough will become too dry.

When you pass the dough through setting number "6," set it aside on a lightly floured towel. Repeat the process with the remaining dough.

To make lasagne, cannelloni, ravioli, or any other stuffed pasta. leave the sheets whole. To make fettuccine or tagliatelle, cut each ribbon in half, then pass each through the appropriate cutting blades. Separate the strands, then hang on a series of dowels or hangers, or spread on a large tablecloth, until ready to cook.