Friday, December 5, 2008

Oodles of Noodles

Last week I did a test run of the new (to me) Atlas 150 pasta maker with the recipe from the directions. There is a slight learning curve as far as getting the dough consistency and flouring right, but once you have a grip on that it's a breeze!

So, feeling emboldened after the test flight we dove right into this year's Pasta Making Marathon. I was concerned that my pasta recipe would be too much for the Atlas to handle as it uses whole wheat flour and a bunch of dried herbs. (The recipe that came with the machine used ONLY flour and eggs, no salt, nothing!) So I tentively made a half batch of my recipe and carefully fed it into the Atlas and...SHAZAM! Out came a beautiful sheet of smooth noodle dough. Then with equal trepidation, into the cutters it went...no worries there either! Out came the most beautiful, perfect noodles I've ever made and in a fraction of the time it took to roll and cut them by hand. The bonus is that because they are all exactly the same thickness and cut, they will cook more evenly too.

Sheets of pasta feeding into the cutters

Pasta coming off cutters onto bamboo skewers for drying

We made about 9 pounds of pasta so that will be 18 packages that we can take to the upcoming Winter Market (minus the ones we eat between now and then!)

Our new pasta drying system (much improved over covering every horizontal surface in the cabin with bed sheets and drying pasta!

2 comments:

girlwithasword said...

That is SUCH a smart way to do that... WOW!!!!

Headfam said...

I just finished up my Christmas noodles tonight. They are drying on the table now, then will go in the freezer. Yep, a pasta maker would have come in really handy.