We all know the KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer is THE wedding registry item. I, too, hoped to get this big ticket item when I got married, but not because I was planning to do a ton of baking. No, I registered for the mixer solely so I could also register for the pasta attachment.
That said, I’ve been married for exactly 3 years (in our home with all our stuff for 2)…and I only just used it for the first time. I imagined making fresh pasta was such a process. I pictured my kitchen destroyed and hours of an afternoon lost with few noodles to show for it. If I had known how simple it all was, I would have done this years ago.
First, let’s start with the recipe, which is so easy I can recite it from memory with zero effort: 2 c. flour, 3 eggs, 1 tbsp olive oil, and 1 tsp salt. Combine the ingredients, by hand, directly in the mixer’s mixing bowl until a shaggy dough forms. Shaggy is a weird descriptor, but I promise you’ll know it when you see it.
And the prep/cleanup is nearly as simple. You take that shaggy dough and let it go to town with the dough hook on low speed for 10 minutes. The recipe said 10 minutes in the mixer should do it and, miraculously, in exactly 10 minutes, the dough combined into one ball, picking up all the little bits. Now just wrap your dough up in some plastic wrap and let it hang out for 30 minutes. You could even do this the day before and stick it in the fridge. Wash that mixing bowl – you won’t be using it anymore. Now it’s time to make your pasta. First, I used the pasta roller attachment to thin out the dough and make sheets. Once I got it to the right thickness, I switched to the spaghetti cutter. Done. Those attachments can pretty much be cleaned with a toothpick and a little brush. Because it’s fresh, the pasta only needs to cook for about 2-3 minutes in boiling water.
We turned our fresh spaghetti into cacio e pepe because it’s so quick and easy, but you can really play around with flavors here, both in the sauce and the pasta itself. Id like to toss some fresh herbs into that dough – maybe some lemon zest and cracked pepper – and see what happens.
You can also mess with thickness/noodle length. If you feed the pasta roller a narrower piece, you can feed it through lots of times before it takes up the width of the roller, meaning you’ll have a much longer noodle. Or if you don’t put it through the roller as much, the piece you feed the spaghetti cutter will be thicker so you’ll get spaghetti vs. angel hair.
Peaches to Apples 