Pasta Making
Mixing
This pasta is made with Einkorn flour. Einkorn makes delicious pasta but any of our hard wheats can be used for this recipe. First, make a well in the center of a mound of flour and crack 1 egg per 100g of flour into the well. Mix the egg into the flour by hand until it is incorporated into a ball. The dough should be firm to hold its shape, but not too firm that you cannot shape the dough. If too wet add some flour, if too dry add some water.
Kneading
Start kneading the dough by pressing firmly with the palm of your hand to stretch out the pasta dough and build gluten strength. Continue to shape and kneed the dough into a ball. This should take about 10 minutes and in the end you have a smooth ball of pasta dough. Wrap the dough ball in plastic to keep it from drying out and let rest for about 30 minutes.
Shaping
There are an incredible number of pasta shapes that are traditionally made by hand. Watch our video on how to make cavatelli pasta, it is a fun and easy pasta shape to make. To turn cavatelli into orecchiette just poke the cavatelli shape inside out to create a disk. Fresh pasta is usually cooked in boiling, salted water but will require less cook time than dry pasta. After boiling the pasta it can be cooked a little in your sauce too.
We also like to watch the Pasta Grannies videos on Youtube where Vicky Bennison goes around the country of Italy recording Nona’s’ traditional pasta making techniques and recipes. It is a great way to learn how to make many traditional Italian pasta shapes by hand and the sauces that go with them. One important thing to keep in mind with pasta is that the shape of the particular pasta must complement the sauce. Cavatelli we like to eat with a basic tomato sauce or meat sauce. Orecchiette pasta are good with vegetables and cooked greens like Rapini. Tagliatelle are good with sauce or can be cut into smaller noodles and added to soups like pasta e fagioli (pasta fazool) or minestrone.