Fettuccine with Sea Scallops, Take Two

This is long overdue… I recently made a second round of “fettuccine with sea scallops,” only this time I had time to make homemade pasta!

Fresh Pasta with Black Pepper
printable recipe

2 2/3 cups flour [I used half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat “pastry” (finely ground) flour]
3 eggs
1 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper, to taste (I didn’t measure, just kept grinding until I like the way the pasta looked)
water, as needed

On a clean surface, measure flour into a mound. Add salt and pepper and mix with hands until salt and pepper are evenly distributed. Create a “well” in the center and crack eggs, one at a time, into well. Incorporate each egg with a fork, gradually pulling flour from the sides of the well. (Be careful not to pull in too much flour from any one spot or your eggs will go spilling out all over the counter.)

When all three eggs have been incorporated and formed a thick paste, gently fold the remaining dry flour into the mixture with your hands and knead for 5 to 10 minutes, adding water a few drops at a time until the you have a smooth ball of dough.

Wrap dough in plastic wrap and let rest for 15-20 minutes. (This step is very important, as it completely changes the texture of the dough.)

Cut off 1/4 of the dough with a bench scraper or knife, press flat with hands or a rolling pin until 1/4” to 1/2” thick, flour on both sides, and feed through a pasta machine on the widest setting. (A rolling pin also works, but it takes longer and is more difficult to get uniform pasta.) Fold the dough into thirds (like and letter) and feed through pasta machine on the widest setting. Repeat once more. This should result in a nice, uniform rectangle of dough.

Once you have that, continue to pass through pasta machine, gradually decreasing the width until you reach the desired thickness. Flour dough whenever necessary to keep from sticking.

If the resulting sheet of dough is longer than you want your pasta, as mine is above, cut it in half with a pizza cutter. Then flour it and feed it through the pasta cutter (in this case, the fettuccine plates), taking care to guide it through as straight as possible.

Hang the pasta to dry! (I use a clean plastic clothes hanger, although my grandmother had great success with a wooden broom handle suspended between two chairs.)

Repeat the entire process with the remaining dough.

Bring a large pot of water to boil. For the scallops/sauce recipe, see my previous post.

Cook desired amount of pasta in salted boiling water for about 5 minutes (or until al dente – cooking time varies depend on how long the pasta has dried).

Use half this recipe for the fettuccine with sea scallops for two—the rest of the pasta can be stored at room temperature in a sealed container, after it has dried completely.

Buon appetito!