[EndlessWinter77]

Hello all, im a newb here but have been cooking for a while so I have decent experience.

Ive been making fresh pasta at home lately, ( 3.5 cups flour to 5 eggs and hand crank machine) and have been loving it, but I have had issues trying to store it (this is uncooked). If I keep it in containers in the fridge or freezer, the fresh noodles tend to bind together and remain a "ball of pasta" when cooked. If I dry them on a rack they become extremely brittle, and it is almost impossible to store them in any way without ending up with "pasta powder".

Any tips? I would also really appreciate if there is any information regarding what the professionals do when making pasta at restaurants that make their own.

Also, any differing fresh pasta recipes would be great! Thanks for any help.

[Craig.723]

I think what you can do to prevent the pasta from sticking together. Is tossing the pasta in flour before storing. Because the flour will remove the moisture on the outside of the pasta.

[kuan]

You gotta dry the pasta. Dry the sheet first, then cut.

[m brown]

Dust the pasta in semolina, let dry a bit, package and then freeze.

When cooking, make sure you are at a full boil, add salt ~ turn down a smidg and add pasta at a moderate boil.

[Mapiva]

Freeze the noodles individually. Lay the fresh pasta out on a baking sheet so that the noodles are not touching and place in the freezer for about an hour. Take them out and then place the individually frozen noodles together in a ziploc bag to store.

[EndlessWinter77]

Ok. Thank you for the answers I have received.

So dusting the pasta in flour helps a little, but when refrigerated then cooked, it still sticks together.

I have not tried drying the sheets before cutting, but I will give it a shot.

Separating then freezing the noodles would prove to be much too time consuming and is not worth trying, there are obviously better methods out there.

Are there any professional cooks that work for restaurants that make their own pasta? and could maybe provide a little insight on their operation?

Thanks!

[GiovanniFanara]

Hi, you might want to try this : half a pound of fine semolina
half a pound of bread flour

put in dough mixer with hook attachment

Add 2 tablespoon of EVOO
Add water, teaspoon by teaspoon until it forms a ball
Then add only 1 or 2 eggs, let it work for a few minutes until gluten
forms then let it rest for 1 hour and process thru machine.
Hang to dry immiediatly. When dry,dust with coarse semolina
and store in
hermetic container until used in the next day or two.

This is not an egg pasta dough like the recipe youve got but from what I have seen its the most current form in restaurants. (Aaand...my grandmother's recipe was very
similar to this and she was sicilian, sooo!

Good luck!

[izbnso]

Groovy, and thanks, GiovanniFanara, I’ve been looking for a semolina pasta recipe for some time and couldn’t get the Internet to produce one for me.

[soup]

I make pasta in a restaurant and store it. I use a speed rack with sheet pans. Spread the pasta out on the sheets, load up the rack with sheets, put them in the freezer for an hour or so, then bag them. It is really the only way I know to keep the pasta from balling up. I do dry my pasta sheets and dredge the pasta in flour after cutting it but still freeze it on sheet pans.

edit: I line the pans with parchment sheets, then just pick up the sheets and funnel the pasta into bags.

[EndlessWinter77]

thanks Giovani and Soup im going to give this recipe and the storing method a shot.

[Quinn01]

Dust the poop out of the pasta when rolling out and when adding to boiling water make sure to get rid of as much flour as you possibly can. But deff dust the pasta after its cut. Than when refridgerating, the fridge itself will add moister to the pasta so i would leave it out on the counter in flour untill ready to cook it, otherwise if your going to hold it a long time just freeze it, just either take the ball or the cut pasta and wrap it up in plastic wrap as tightly as you can but making sure the cut pasta isnt in a ball itself.

I dont know if that all made sence to you, it came out a little scrambled.

Hope i sheaded some insite.

[Porkcentric]

Hey, I work in a restaurant, we make about 3-5 different pastas. our basic recipe is 2c 00 flour + 2c semolina flour, 3 eggs, 3 egg yolks 2 tb olive oil. throw in kitchen aid, and once bound let it go for about 10 minutes so it's super elastic. I usually add another 1/2 cup of flour or a little water depending on humidity. let it rest at least 1/2 hour. when you rolling the pasta use lots of flour on it and on the roller. roll to the desired thickness, cut into squares about 4"X4" or longer depending on the pasta. I usually will do the whole batch and stack up the squares, letting them air dry just a touch. then run them through the appropriate die and toss them with plenty of flour. pack them up into small plastic pint containers like the ones you get in chinese restaurants for soup and refrigerate. when you're cooking the pasta make sure you have plenty of water, and i mean plenty at a boil. take your pasta out of the container and gently fluff it up and pull it apart, drop it in salted water. water shouldn't stop boiling when you put the pasta in, and make sure you don't overcook it, there's no true aldente in fresh pasta.

[Porkcentric]

Originally Posted by GiovanniFanara

Hi, you might want to try this : half a pound of fine semolina
half a pound of bread flour

put in dough mixer with hook attachment

Add 2 tablespoon of EVOO
Add water, teaspoon by teaspoon until it forms a ball
Then add only 1 or 2 eggs, let it work for a few minutes until gluten
forms then let it rest for 1 hour and process thru machine.
Hang to dry immiediatly. When dry,dust with coarse semolina
and store in
hermetic container until used in the next day or two.

This is not an egg pasta dough like the recipe youve got but from what I have seen its the most current form in restaurants. (Aaand...my grandmother's recipe was very
similar to this and she was sicilian, sooo!

Good luck!

Most restaurants actually prefer an all egg pasta. Think about it, using water for binder doesn't add flavor. If you're gonna make pasta and you want it to taste rich and stand up to the food you're putting on it you want to fit as many eggs in it as possible, better yet as many yolks as possible. Bill Buford, the author of a fairly good gonzo culinary book called Heat wrote a small treatise on this subject when he was trying to trace the origin of using eggs in the pasta dough, it's very interesting should definetely give it a read.

My grandmother was Armenian, made pasta on the regular basis, mostly egg, although in the leantimes it'd be water. To this day when I"m making pasta dough I get flashbacks of our apartment in Odessa with fresh handcut and handrolled pasta laying out, drying on the baking trays.

Obviously there's more than one way of skinning a cat , I just think that culinarily (dunno if that's a real word) we need to do it as flavourfully as possible