2 hours ago
7
When making fresh pasta, why does the dough sometimes tear when rolling, and other times not?
Thomas, by email
“I’m sorry to hear your pasta is rippy,” sympathises Jacob Kenedy, chef-patron of Bocca di Lupo in London, who is teaming up with fellow chef Merlin Labron-Johnson to celebrate the Italian midsummer holiday ferragosto with two feasts in Somerset next month. Assuming Thomas is rolling an egg pasta dough in a pasta machine, there are a number of possible explanations. First, Kenedy says, he might be using the wrong type of flour (“use 00 flour”), the dough might be too cold (“use it at room temperature”) or too dry (“it should be supple, like Play-Doh”). Naz Hassan, head chef of Ornella and Lupa, both in London, adds that the latter might be down to the size of the egg(s) Thomas is using: “One egg to 100g of 00 flour is the basic pasta dough recipe, but that will vary depending on the size of your egg,” he says. Of course, some people prefer to use just the yolk, and if that applies to Thomas, Hassan suggests thinking about maybe adding the egg white, too: “It has the structure that allows pasta to have the stretchiness it deserves.”
But, in true Goldilocks style, a dough that is too wet might also spell trouble, Kenedy says: “I like my pasta dough wet enough to roll by hand – it gives a more elastic mouthfeel – which means, if I roll it in a machine, it sticks slightly to the roller and may rip.” The fix? Laminate the dough thoroughly and perhaps use “the finest dusting” of flour until the dough passes smoothly through the pasta machine. “Then make sure to roll that flour in, so the outside of the pasta isn’t dusty,” Kenedy adds.
As in life, time out is also important. “Like bread and any byproduct of flour, you need to rest the dough to allow the gluten structure to relax and bind together,” says Hassan, who does this overnight, while Kenedy prefers to rest his dough, covered and at room temperature, for half an hour to an hour after kneading. In fact, Kenedy reckons that poor gluten development is the most likely suspect of Thomas’s pasta plight: “Laminate the pasta many, many times at the thickest setting,” he says. “Roll, fold in half, roll again, fold in three, roll again – at least 12 times – until the pasta is extremely silky-smooth, before rolling it any thinner.”
The rolling is also where Thomas really needs to practise the art of patience, so get some music on and avoid any big jumps in thickness (AKA clicks of the pasta machine wheel). Hassan says: “If you try to force the dough through the machine or skip one of the steps – going straight from setting number three to setting one, say – that will create ridges on the sides of the dough.” And that, in turn, can cause those rips. “Obviously, it’s hard to know which of these reasons it might be without standing next to Thomas in the kitchen,” Hassan adds, but then, having a proper chef alongside would most likely just add to Thomas’s pasta pressure.
