Casoncelli - The Pasta Dough

Jenifer and I have always said we wanted to make homemade pasta but always allowed the excuse of not having a pasta press keep us from actually doing it. For Thanksgiving we decided to change that and went out and bought a relatively inexpensive ($59) hand pasta press - Viola! We are now set to make pasta and it was sooo much easier than either of us thought it would be.

We sort of dove into the deep end for our Thanksgiving meal by choosing to make a filled pasta this first time. With that said, we followed Vetri's basic pasta dough recipe to the letter and it turned out great. The dough recipe was incredibly simple and cooked up as good as we could have hoped.

Simple Basic Dough - Vetri with our interpretation
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup + 1 1/2 tablespoons semolina flour
9 large egg yolks
3-4 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon EVOO

Combine flours in mixer with paddle attachment. With the mixer running on medium (slow enough as to not make a mess of the flour - lesson learned) add the egg yolks, water and oil; mixing until the ingredients just stick together. Take the dough from the mixing bowl and kneed for about 5 minutes on a lightly floured working surface. When done the dough will be smooth and gently pull back into place when slightly stretched. Shape the dough into a 6-inch long log, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or up to 3 days (we made the dough the day before we needed it to make making the filled pasta more manageable).

When ready to use the dough cut it into six equal pieces and let them return to about room temperature. The dough is now ready to run through the pasta press into whatever shape desired.