You've gotta roll with it
Aug. 11th, 2008 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaAt the weekend, I decided to make pasta.
Now, thus far everyone I've said that to thought I meant boil some water, put some pasta in it, and serve. I actually meant that I was going to make pasta, out of flour and eggs.
I was following instructions given in The Naked Chef - while I happily admit that Jamie Oliver himself can be quite irritating, I quite like his cookery books. The instructions basically go: get some 00-grade flour, get some eggs, make into dough. There's a bit more detail, but that's the gist.
So, I did that. The dough was extremely sticky and refused to behave nicely, so I added a little more flour until it stopped clagging to my fingers, the bowl, passersby, etc. Jamie wanted me to have a "smooth, silken, elastic dough". I was prepared to settle for "dough". To be honest, I wasn't sure what a silken dough would be like, and was rather hoping it would become obvious. It didn't.
Anyway, having let the dough rest a while I began to roll it out. Jamie recommends aiming for about a milimetre thickness. My dough wasn't having any of it. Roll this way... dough rolls out. Roll that way... other dimension shrinks dramatically.
So, basically, my dough failed to be elastic enough. I carried on anyway, and the resulting pasta was edible if a little odd... the dough having been far too thick, the pasta was surprisingly chunky. Possibly I could market it as a new style, I'm not sure.
However, I'm not sure how to fix it for next time. Maybe I didn't knead it for long enough, though I felt like I'd helped it do all the developing it was going to do. Maybe the dough was too dry. I had, after all, put more flour in than was recommended, but I can't see how you could have made it into a sensible dough without doing that.
Does anyone have any ideas ? Or does anyone have any general pasta-making recommendations ? Jamie recommends Tipo flour, but I couldn't find that round these parts so ended up with McDougal's 00 sauce and pastry flour.
Maybe it's just a matter of practice :)
Now, thus far everyone I've said that to thought I meant boil some water, put some pasta in it, and serve. I actually meant that I was going to make pasta, out of flour and eggs.
I was following instructions given in The Naked Chef - while I happily admit that Jamie Oliver himself can be quite irritating, I quite like his cookery books. The instructions basically go: get some 00-grade flour, get some eggs, make into dough. There's a bit more detail, but that's the gist.
So, I did that. The dough was extremely sticky and refused to behave nicely, so I added a little more flour until it stopped clagging to my fingers, the bowl, passersby, etc. Jamie wanted me to have a "smooth, silken, elastic dough". I was prepared to settle for "dough". To be honest, I wasn't sure what a silken dough would be like, and was rather hoping it would become obvious. It didn't.
Anyway, having let the dough rest a while I began to roll it out. Jamie recommends aiming for about a milimetre thickness. My dough wasn't having any of it. Roll this way... dough rolls out. Roll that way... other dimension shrinks dramatically.
So, basically, my dough failed to be elastic enough. I carried on anyway, and the resulting pasta was edible if a little odd... the dough having been far too thick, the pasta was surprisingly chunky. Possibly I could market it as a new style, I'm not sure.
However, I'm not sure how to fix it for next time. Maybe I didn't knead it for long enough, though I felt like I'd helped it do all the developing it was going to do. Maybe the dough was too dry. I had, after all, put more flour in than was recommended, but I can't see how you could have made it into a sensible dough without doing that.
Does anyone have any ideas ? Or does anyone have any general pasta-making recommendations ? Jamie recommends Tipo flour, but I couldn't find that round these parts so ended up with McDougal's 00 sauce and pastry flour.
Maybe it's just a matter of practice :)
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 02:39 pm (UTC)liquidflour (silly me) for as long as you can stand it. Knead it enough, and it'll smooth out of its own volition, if the proportions are right. Too much additional flour will make the flour/liquid balance sufficiently wrong to make the dough have an odd texture and properties similar to what you describe. The same applies to making bread, too; resist the temptation to have clean hands, just keep kneading.no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 03:15 pm (UTC)I also made bread for the first time[*] at the weekend and that did have similar problems, and came out a bit heavy, so maybe you're right and I should have just kept going.
I hope to have another go soon, so will report back :)
[*] ish. The mother made all our bread when I lived at home, and I was often involved, but usually at the making-it-into-buns stage rather than the actual dough-making stage.