How to Make Italian Pasta from Scratch

Making homemade pasta from scratch results in a far superior meal. Homemade bowtie pasta is one shape that kids love. It also holds onto your favorite sauce very well. 

Check out these 30 things to know when visiting Italy, too!

Semolina is the flour of choice for making the best pasta noodles, right? Well, talk to folks in Bologna, Italy, and they may disagree. In fact, when I had the chance to attend a cooking class with a private chef in Bologna, I learned that Bolognese chefs avoid using semolina flour — sometimes called hard flour — for their pasta.

Thanks very much to Carmelita from Cook Italy who patiently walked us through making this homemade pasta dough.

Ingredients

Flour — I use unbleached all-purpose in just about all of my baking. This will be slightly different than the flour they use in Italy, but it will get the job done here.

Eggs — Fresh eggs, store bought, use what you have readily available.

The proportions for the pasta are 100g plain flour (not semolina) to one egg that weighs 65g in its shell. Now, eggs are going to vary slightly in their weight, but this is generally a large egg.

How many people this recipe feeds depends on who you’re feeding and what else you’re eating. Using these quantities will result in a large portion for one person. Served with a big salad or side dishes, it will more likely feed two to three people.

Making Homemade Farfalle

Start by measuring the flour into a shallow bowl. Use a small small bowl or the base of a glass to press a well into the flour. Make sure that the flour completely covers the bottom of the bowl.

Beat the egg so that it’s thoroughly blended, but don’t whip it. We don’t want it to be airy, just thoroughly broken up, with the yolk and egg white blended together into a liquid.

Pour the beaten egg into the flour. Gently swirl the bowl, causing the egg to move within the flour. You’ll begin to see the egg pick up a dusting of flour. (This is visible in the video above.)  This is the very beginning of incorporating the flour into the egg.

After a fair bit of flour has worked its way onto the surface of the egg, you’ll begin working the flour into the egg with your fingers. Use your thumb, pointer, and middle fingers. The goal here is to pinch bits of flour at a time, working the flour into the egg very slowly, bringing flour from the edge of the well into the egg.

As the egg becomes incorporated, use your second hand to slowly push the flour from the outer part of the well toward the center, continuing to pinch the flour into the egg. As more flour is incorporated, the pasta dough will become thicker. Once fully incorporated, use your hands to gently knead the dough a few times until it’s smooth. Congratulations! You’ve just made pasta from scratch!

Working with Homemade Pasta Dough

The key, according to Carmelita, is to avoid letting the pasta dough dry out. Since you’ll be working with only a portion of the dough at a time, cover the remaining dough.

Carmelita inverts a bowl over the inactive ball of dough — even if it will just be sitting for a minute. You could also cover with a damp tea towel.

This homemade pasta dough recipe can be used for making a variety of shapes, but you’ll see our bow tie pasta recipe in action here. We used a pasta maker to create thin sheets of pasta.

Start with a golf-ball sized piece of pasta dough and run it through the pasta maker at its widest setting. Each time you roll the dough through, it will become thinner. You may run it through once or twice on the largest setting, and then change to the next setting. In this way, the pasta dough is slowly transformed into a sheet.

To make tagliatelle, you’d use the pasta machine to cut the dough into strips. For farfalle, the cutting is done by hand with a rolling tool.

Cut the dough into long strips, about an inch and a half wide. Then cut across the strip in one-inch increments to create little rectangles. Once cut, use your thumb and forefinger to pinch the center together to create the familiar bow ties. Set shaped pasta on a tray while you make the rest of the dough.

Once cooked, top this farfalle pasta with your favorite sauce or try this homemade Alfredo sauce. Carmelita served it with a simple ham and zucchini combo that was delicious! Parmesan cheese optional.

FAQs

How do I cook fresh pasta?

You can cook as soon as you have shaped the pasta. Add to boiling water and stir gently to ensure the noodles don’t stick together. And timing? It’s easy! Watch for pasta to float and then drain. If you aren’t cooking right away, let the pasta dry on a tea towel and then it will take just slightly longer to cook.

How do I shape noodles?

The fun part here is making them your own. Grab any cutters you have to make straight or jagged edges. Pinch parts together. You can buy special cutters or just use a glass for making ravioli. Lightly floured hands will keep the dough from sticking to you, and water will help join edges (like in those ravioli).

Do I need special equipment?

The best part about this recipe is proving that you can just grab egg and flour and go! You can knead this without a mixer and you don’t need a pasta roller or special machine. If you find that you’ll be making pasta more frequently and truly enjoy it, then equipment can make it fun and easy. But it definitely isn’t a requirement.

Food in Italy is so fresh and wonderful. Is it because we’re on vacation, or because the food is truly that much better quality than the American fare I’m used to? (I think the latter!) Making pasta from scratch at home is a fun way to relive that special vacation.

More dinner recipes to try

• Vegan sweet potato black bean chili
• Adobo chicken
• Delicious Italian recipes at home
• Butternut squash pasta
• Slow cooker chicken cacciatore
• Chicken shawarma wraps

Originally published August 2019; this post has been updated.