Handmade Pasta from the Napolitan

Dear Bloggers,
      WOW! What a day! I cannot believe that I will driving to Tennessee this time next week and hopefully arriving around now. I just cannot believe it. Today I accomplished quite a goal, to successfully make handmade pasta. I made two types of pasta, le linguine and i fusilli lunghi. I simply began by creating a well with flour and 1 egg and slowly mixing the two together until a perfect dough was formed. After, I rolled it out into a thin long sheet. After, I folded the sheet into quarters and re-rolled it out. Once rolled thinly again to the size of the first long sheet, I folded it back up into sixths. I rerolled it for the final time until I maintained another long thin sheet. This process allows the pasta to be as smooth and elastic as possible. Yes, with a pasta roller it would have been a lot easier, but that's where the workout comes in by rolling it with a marble pastry roller. Fun! Once the thin sheet was rolled out, I cut the edges to make them all even and folded it long ways to create a roll with multiple sheets. In between each sheet I added a good amount of flour to prevent the pasta from sticking while cutting. I simply ran my knife along the roll of pasta and cut them in 1/8th dices, then pulled them all apart and laid them out to dry. These are the linguine. If you want to create i fusilli lunghi, simply take the linguine and wrap them around a pencil and press the ends in on each other then lay out on a cutting board to dry.

           So simple and so delicious! This pasta looks beautiful and will make an excellent meal later on. After today, I know what I'm going to do for the rest of my summer, master pasta and bread making because after that, I know my skills will improve tremendously. Well until next time, I hope you continue to stay healthy and happy cooking!