PASTA!!!

So, I've made pasta at home before, but I've always used the same whole-wheat tagliatelle recipe from an old Cooking Light. It's good - and it got even better after I realized that I'd been using a broken kitchen scale to measure my flour, using three times the amount of dry ingredients (back to the measuring cup for me!) I've always wanted to try making pasta with regular old semolina, though, and today I did! I used the recipe off the back of the Bob's Red Mill semolina flour that I bought for the pasta:



Basic Pasta Recipe (from Bob's Red Mill)

• 1 1/2 cups semolina flour (I used 3/4 cup semolina and 3/4 cup regular white flour - the recipe notes said "many people prefer" this, so I thought I'd try it the cheap way first)


• 1/2 teaspoon salt, optional


• 2 eggs or 3 egg whites, beaten


• 2 tablespoons water


• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine semolina and salt. Add beaten egg whites (or eggs), water and oil. Mix to make a stiff dough. Knead 10 minutes or until dough is elastic. Wrap dough in towel or place in plastic bag and let rest 20 minutes. On a lightly floured surface, roll out to desired thickness and cut as desired.

I added the liquids to the dry ingredients by pouring them into the food processor while it was running (on the lowest setting - "stir," I think).

I made half of the dough into nondescript linguine-like noodles (the skinniest I could make them while still keeping them in one piece).

I decided to turn the other half into orrechiette, but not before I had already rolled the dough out flat. So I cut it up into little squares (doesn't it look like it's going to become Cinnamon Toast Crunch?), then pressed them into little ear-shell things.