First I laid out a few egg pasta recipes and examined their contents, then I claimed I finally understood how to make it. Now I have to take that back. I was only just beginning to learn. Making fresh pasta, with just 2 or 3 ingredients, is as “simple” as bread, which is to say it is very complicated. I got cocky, I thought I knew what I was doing. But I don’t. I am humbled.
Having said that, I just learned a few more things about fresh pasta from the book Heat by Bill Buford, and I think they will help answer my earlier confusion about it. Like bread, pasta will sing only when made with the best, freshest, most excellent ingredients you can get your paws on. And given the time commitment, I can’t see how it would be worth making any other way. In my post on pasta doughs, I’d wondered aloud why Jamie Oliver uses eight egg yolks plus 3 eggs in his dough, where all the other cookbooks used just 2 or 3 eggs. As it turns out, Mario Batali does the same thing at Babbo. Why? Well, first, the recipe calls for almost twice as much dough as the others. But more importantly, Jamie’s recipe freely admits something about the modern eggs we get from battery hens: they suck. The extra yolks are there to make up for the low-grade eggs that most of us use every day. Back when all chickens were grass-fed and life was great, you might’ve only needed 3 eggs. In parts of Italy, I’m sure that’s still the case. But if you don’t have fantastic eggs—grass-fed eggs with big, neon yellow-bordering-on-red yolks—you simply need more yolks to make up for it. Apparently Batali uses salt and oil, too, to further redress the egg quality issues.
FYI, here’s Batali’s pasta dough—made for American mass-produced eggs:
- 1 lb flour
- 3 eggs
- 8 egg yolks
- hint of salt
- drizzle of olive oil
- water as needed
Of course, all of these recipes assume you’re going to know by feel when the dough is perfectly hydrated, and when to add water. I’ve learned a little about this from breadmaking, but it’s not something that’s easy to explain in English. It’s kinesthetic. It’s about muscle memory, and when I read about it, I lament not working in a professional kitchen. Unless I’m making a ton of this stuff every day, kneading it out by hand, I don’t get a chance to teach my body the feel of perfect dough, just as I can’t easily teach my body how to poke and smell a steak and tell that it’s perfectly cooked. Anyway, the dough sould be tacky, but not sticky, while you knead it. After a few minutes of kneading, it should shine a little. So it won’t be dry, exactly, but it will be something you can knead easily.
Good luck.