Why not whip up a batch of pasta with regular flour just to practice? That would also clean out the rollers.
You are so smart! That's just what I was looking at doing...maybe a half-batch to clean it and to get the hang of it. The instructions say to run an inaugural batch through to clean out any manufacturing burrs from the roller and the two cutters. As I look at it and read more about making pasta, I wish I had got one sooner. I can tell I'm really going to enjoy it. Lots of tips & tricks out there on forums and websites, including stand mixer instructions for making the dough. I'm taking lots of notes. I was looking at the ravioli attachment videos. Pretty slick devices, although I think they likely don't work as perfectly as the videos imply. Handmade will be fine, unless I open a restaurant. After ravioli, lasagna is next on my list!
So I did a batch of "throw away" pasta to clean the machine. I didn't follow any recipe, just made some basic egg noodles. Here's the Imperia machine with the tray set up: You can see how it provides an extra hand. I lay the pasta on the tray, feed it with one hand (into either the roller or the cutters) and turn the crank with the other. It's funny that these are all the same model#, with no real differentiation for the one that comes with the tray. Stumbling upon this on Ebay was just dumb luck. Had Amazon had inventory of the one they carry, I would not have even known about there being a tray available. I can tell I'm going to like using this. I can see me making the basic egg noodles I put in soups & stews with this machine. Should have done this a long time ago. I received one bag of flour yesterday (Antimo Caputo 00 Pasta & Gnocchi flour.) I'm gonna make my first meal when I reeived those ravioli stamps I ordered (should arrive Tuesday.) In the meantime I've been being "me," and beating it to death. I've read and watched a bunch of stuff on pasta. It's interesting that the recommended ratio of Pasta Flour to AP Flour (or to Semolina) is all over the place: from 25% pasta flour to 85% pasta flour. I also saw that in Southern Italy, they make their pasta with 100% semolina and water (no eggs,) because omitting eggs extends its shelf life (or maybe they ate all the chickens ) The upshot of all that is there is no wrong way to do it...most flours are fine in any ratio (excepting no cake flour), any combination of eggs and water works. Gonna go to Charlottesville today to see if I can find some ground veal for my ravioli recipe. If not, I got a grinder for my stand mixer and some veal in the freezer.
Good job, @John Brunner . It's fun to have a new toy. So what do you think about the flatbread possibility?
The only problem with using it to make flatbread is its size, @Beth Gallagher . And some of the naan I make is real sticky, so might not take kindly to having enough flour put on it so it doesn't get stuck in the machine. Here's a recipe for Parmesan Rosemary Flatbreads done in a pasta machine. Here's a recipe for Grissini (thin bread sticks) flattened in the pasta machine and cut 1/3" with the fettuccini attachment. I just read an EHow article about making pie dough with the pasta machine. You do it in sections and then pinch the widths together along the seam to assemble a pie-width sheet. (Sounds like another nonsensical EHow/WikiHow article by people who never actually tried it.) Not a lot out there with alternative uses for pasta machines.
Good point about the sticky dough, but I'm going to try it anyway. (One of these days. ) I have always hated rolling anything with a rolling pin; just a personal quirk.
I wouldn't make half the stuff I do if I couldn't knead it in a stand mixer. Let someone else be "one with the dough."
Going a bit off-topic here... Regarding naan, I've tried a bunch of recipes...from "dessert sweet" to "plain yogurt tart." (I was actually chasing a recipe for bread I had in an Indian restaurant without realizing that it was likely chapati and not naan.) I put the recipes in a spreadsheet and note how I like each one, calculating the solid-to-liquid ratio of each for further experimentation. I've also tried a bunch of different ways to cook it. My favorite so far (because it imparts flavor) is to roll up the naan into individual serving-size balls, put them on a cookie sheet, take it out by the [gas] grill, then flatten them one at a time and immediately throw them on the preheated grill. I brush the tops with melted ghee, and when I flip them over, I brush the other side with ghee. Maybe 2/3 of them actually make it back inside! *burp*
So now I'm pissed. I got 6 ravioli drying for dinner. Only 5 are likely to survive the boiling. Gonna have 2 fudgesicles for dessert, I guess. Or I'll have leftover hush puppies with marinara sauce. It's a learning experience. It's a learning experience. It's a learning experience. >I made the pasta filling last night so it could meld in the fridge. I ended up grinding the veal myself. >I got the pasta stamps today!! >I made the dough and let it rest in the fridge for an hour. 1/3 semolina and 2/3 Caputo 00, eggs + water. >I covered the pending dough with plastic wrap as I worked and put a moist paper towel with it. >I set up the machine and in no time flat had it down pretty good. Yay, You Tube tutorials!! >>That tray is really to keep the incoming end of the pasta up and out of the way as it exits at the bottom. >I laid each finished sheet on a towel-lined cookie sheet, sprinkling with flour where they overlapped. >>Kept them covered with a damp towel. I screwed up when it came time to layer the second+ layers of pasta. I used wax paper in between each layer, thinking "It's wax paper. It won't stick." *sigh* I ended up with 4 total tiers of pasta and a new recipe for Super Glue. I may as well have River Danced on them. The only usable pasta was the last sheet to come off of the machine. Dammit. No one discussed this part. So next time: >I'll use Setting #4 out of 6 instead of #5, with #6 being the thinnest. >>One web article said to make it thinnest. My instructions said to use #5 (second-thinnest.) It needs to be thicker. >I'll set up an assembly area and put together the ravioli as the pasta comes off of the machine. This is what happens when a 1/2 British-1/4 German makes Italian. I should have done Yorkshire Pudding and Schnitzel.
Yeh, I'll be back at it in a day or two, beating it until I get it right. As has been said (maybe by you?), it's not as though the ingredients are all that expensive. I put the ravioli filling in the freezer. It turned out fine. As did the dough recipe & processing. I watched another Italian on a video. His standard dough for noodle pasta (linguine, fettuccine, etc) is 3 cups of flour and 15 egg yolks!!! So much for avoiding the Amish thing, huh? I hope I get something to eat out of this before I burn out on it. I need to stop reading. Maybe I'll go make a quiche to cleanse my mental palate
Maybe just make some cheese or mushroom ravioli to practice. (Don't waste your veal. ) I admire your tenacity; I'm all about easy these days. I toss stuff together and hope for the best.
Yeh, I was surprised (not in a pleasant way) when I saw how much ground veal that piece of meat yielded when I trimmed off the fat, bone and gristle. The rest is put up in the freezer for another day. I went through this when I was searching the best way to make pizza. I must have made a dozen pizzas that week. I made a Baked Alaska once. I cleaned my oven twice that day trying to get the meringue to set...third time was a charm. Do you have any idea what egg whites do when they hit a 500° oven? I'll never do that again. But I can say that I've made a Basked Alaska from scratch...chocolate brownie/cake, creme de menthe ice cream, cocoa meringue. Believe it or not, I think the recipe was in a Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk cookbook. I guess it beats watching TV.
Ravioli Pasta, Part Deux So I made a fresh batch of dough today from a different recipe, and will pick up new filling ingredients tomorrow. This recipe was from a video of an Italian guy who made 3 types of dough (the guy I mentioned who puts 15 egg yolks in his noodle dough) and listed the pasta types each dough was meant to make (stuffed pasta, noodles and shapes.) His recipe for stuffed pasta (ravioli, tortellini, agnolotti) dough is: 360 grams '00' flour 90 grams egg yolk 100 grams egg white 5 grams of salt 6 grams extra virgin oil I rarely weigh ingredients (mostly use my scale for dividing bulk meat and dividing dough into equal parts), and have never weighed yolks & whites, so this was a new experience. The whites from 4 eggs were slightly too much, so I spooned out a little. The yolks from 5 eggs were exactly 100 grams. I picked the right size for that 5th egg! The olive oil was a little funny to weigh. 6 grams is less than 1/2 tsp, so when you put it in a container to weight it, only 1.5 grams comes out and the rest coats the container. So I dumped whatever would readily come out of the container, reset the scale for the coated container to 0, and weighed out my 6 grams. It is such a scant amount relative to the recipe I can't believe it really does anything. I mean, less than 1/2 tsp??? And using any olive oil in ravioli dough is a topic of conflict (some cite specific reasons for not doing so)...but this guy did have an authentic accent Then I kneaded the dough in my stand mixer for 10 minutes (I love you, Kitchen Aid.) Most things I've read agree that you cannot over-knead pasta dough, and say to go 5-10 minutes in a stand mixer. This Italian guy did it by hand for 15 minutes for each of the 3 recipes. It turned out nice. The other recipe only had 2 eggs for the same amount of flour (about 3 cups) plus water to make up the difference, so this is obviously a deeper yellow. And the other recipe was 1/3 semolina, so was not as absorbent (fine a grind.) So we'll see. The filling I'm going to make this time is Italian sausage + spinach + ricotta. I'm still astounded I can't find advice on how to stage sheets of ravioli pasta when it comes off of the machine...lots of advice out there on stranded noodles. Restaurant vids show the pasta being stuffed the moment it comes out of the machine, so I gotta think that's the way to do it.