Today’s packaging-saving effort was making my own pasta.

As a family, we eat our fair share of pasta.  Dried pasta is quick, easy and relatively affordable.  Of course, it inevitably comes in plastic packaging, and that is the issue. I would be very happy to buy dried pasta in bulk if I was able to, but as yet I have not found a bulk-bin shop that offers it.  So the only alternative is to make it at home.  Which is all well and good, but this renders it into a much more time-consuming task.

Today this was possible as I had more time on my hands than usual, being stuck at home unwell.  So off I went.

I am the proud owner of a pasta-maker that has not been used around 5 years at a guess.  That’s how long the kids have been around.  So out of retirement it came for my pasta making effort.

I used this recipe that came with the machine, but I made a 3/4 recipe using 3 eggs and 375g flour.

Ingredients

• 500g flour
• 4 eggs

Method

Place flour in a bowl.  Make a well in the centre and break the eggs in.

Mix with a fork until combined.  If too dry, add water.  If too wet, add flour.

Knead on a floured bench with your palms until completely homogeneous.   A good dough will not stick to your fingers.

And that’s it, that’s all it takes to make the dough.  I kneaded it for about 10 minutes to achieve a smooth consistency.  After that, you slice approximately 1-2cm slices and, starting on the fattest setting, start to roll out your pasta.  I was making lasagna, so all I needed was flat pasta sheets.  It turned out I had a wee of dough left over, so I make that into fettucine.  I had the meat sauce cooking while I made the pasta.  Here’s some pics of the process:

Cut dough in 1cm thick slices.

Roll it on increasingly thinner settings until the desired thickness is reached. For me, this was the thinnest setting but one.

The final rolling.

Cutting a rolled past sheet into fettucine.

The finished product.

I made my lasagna a couple of hours later, it was delicious!  The fettuccine I left to dry for 5 minutes then floured and wound into four little nests, popped them in a plastic bag (yes plastic, but at least re-use!) and then into the refrigerator for use the next day.  I’m also experimenting with freezing a couple of the nests, so I’ll see how well that works.

I’d love to say that I’ll make my own pasta from now on in, but I’m not sure how practical this will be for me as a working mum.  I work three days a week, and pasta is a great standby if I have meatballs already made.  I would have to make it in advance, and freeze it ( if this works).  Another option might be to made the dough on the weekend and pop it in the fridge: making the dough is the time-consuming part.  Then all I’d have to do is to roll it and cut it on the day.

Alternatively if anyone knows of a place I can buy bulk pasta, I’d be keen to know about it. 🙂