Homemade Pasta With Only 2 Ingredients (+Video!)

Homemade fresh pasta is far, far superior to the dried pasta you buy in the supermarket. Yet people imagine that making your own fresh pasta would be a real chore. Let me tell you folks, making pasta is easy and fun and the resulting fresh homemade pasta has the most amazing chewy taste and perfect texture. Read on and give it a go!

Why bother to make your own pasta?

• Because it tastes SO much better than the stuff from the store.
• It’s fun to make something like pasta from scratch. And if you have kids they will just LOVE making pasta.
• Getting hands-on in the kitchen and making your food from scratch is really grounding, makes you feel good and part of the food chain.

Here’s a terrible admission. I used to have a pasta machine that was only ever used for crafting. It has made all sorts of clay goodies but never anything remotely edible.

Move on a few years and that part of my crafting life was out the window and the pasta machine with it (not literally!) I ended up buying another pasta machine for the more normal use – making my own homemade pasta.

Ingredients for making homemade pasta

There are only 2 ingredients in this homemade pasta, that’s it, just 2. Don’t you just love a recipe that is so damn simple!

• Flour – Use Italian Type 00 Flour. This is very finely milled durum wheat flour that gives you that all important bite to your pasta.
• Eggs – always use really fresh eggs when making pasta. Freerange eggs are best of course.

Do I add salt to pasta dough?

You will see I haven’t included salt in my list of pasta ingredients. That’s because when you cook pasta you should be cooking it in seriously salty water. As salty as the sea itself!

Can I use other flour to make pasta?

If you don’t have any )) pasta flour in your larder then don’t give up on your homemade pasta plans completely. You can make pasta with basic plain (allpurpose) flour. You will just get a slightly rougher pasta and less silky dough.

How to test if eggs are fresh

To check if your eggs are still fresh fill a wide glass with water and pop those eggs in one at a time. A fresh egg will lie on its side at the bottom of the glass. If it is standing upright at the bottom it is still fresh. However, if the egg is floating about in there, or worse bobbing about on the sirface of the water, chuck it out immediately.

How to make homemade pasta

There are 2 ways to make pasta. By hand as I’m doing here or in a food processor. The latter will take you all of 5 minutes.

Making pasta by hand takes just a little onlger (say 15 minutes) but it is such a relaxing process, it’s well worth the little effort involved. And as I’ve said, pasta making iis fun!

• On a wooden board make a heap of flour and hollow out a well in the centre.
• Crack your eggs into the well in the centre of the flour so that they don’t leak out all over the table. Use a fork to break up the eggs and gently start bringing the flour into the eggs and mix things together.
• Now use your hands (this is where kids come in very handy!) and bring everything together to form a dough.
• Knead the dough for about 10 minutes till it goes from a scraggy ball to a smoother dough.
• Wrap the pasta dough in cling film and pop it in the fridge to rest for half an hour.
• Now sprinkle a little flour on your work surface and roll out your dough with a rolling pin till it’s thin enough to pass through the widest setting on your pasta machine.
• Then start closing down the setting so that with each pass through the machine the pasta sheet is getting thinner and thinner.
• I am making tagliatelle here so my final pass through the pasta machine involves the cutting blades to get the long flat strands of pasta.
• I am making tagliatelle here so my final pass through the pasta machine involves the cutting blades to get the long flat strands of pasta.

That’s it. You’ve just made homemade pasta. You can use it right away.

Cooking fresh pasta

Simply fill a large pan with water and bring it to the boil. The Italians say that pasta cooking water should be as salty as the sea.

Add the pasta to the boiling salty water for about 3 minutes.

Your pasta should still be al dente (have a slight bite to it) when you serve it.

Serve your pasta with homemade pesto like this roasted red pepper pesto or my rosemary and walnut pesto. Or a homemade tomato sauce. Or anything you fancy.

What is the difference between fresh and dried pasta?

Fresh pasta is what you’ve just made. Pasta all nice and bendy and ready to cook in just a couple of minutes.

Dried pasta is what will last for ages in a jar and take a few minutes more to cook.

How to dry pasta.

If you’ve made tagliatella strings as I have all you need to do is hang them up to dry. Over a clean dowel or rolling pin suspended between two stacks of cans. Over the back of a wooden chair. Anything like that where air will be able to circulate around the pasta dough and dry it out thoroughly.

How long will this keep?

Fresh pasta will keep in the fridge for up to 2 days. If the dough hasn’t been rolled out and is still in a ball just wrap in cling film.

If the pasta has already been rolled out and cut into strips or whatever you can lightly dust it with a little flour so that it doesn’t stick together in a clump and pop it into a plastic bag or box in the fridge for up to 2 days.

Can you freeze homemade pasta dough?

Yes you can freeze the dough for up to a month. Defrost thoroughly before using of course.

Storing dried pasta

Although you have dried your homemade pasta please don’t think that it will keep anywhere as long as commercially made dried pasta. Store bought dried pasta will keep for up to 2 years.

Homemade dried pasta will keep for up to 6 months in an airtight container.

Looking for more larder basics to make at home? Then check out these fun recipes before you go;

How to make homemade butter (+video!)

Making garlic infused oil – perfect for cooking and salads

How to make homemade almond milk

Making homemade yogurt (+video!)

Homemade curry spice mix

Finally, if you do try this recipe don’t forget to leave a comment/star rating below as I just love to hear from readers. Want more Larder Love? Then follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter and sign up for my newsletter too of course.