Homemade Pasta Dough Recipe
This pasta dough recipe is the best formula to make a consistent dough every time and can be whipped up in just a few minutes in a food processor. Making your own fresh pasta dough is a lot of fun! At a minimum, you need a fork, a rolling pin, a clean flat surface, and a strong arm for kneading. But, if you want to whip up some quick fresh pasta dough in just a few minutes you can use a food processor.
I went searching for the best ratio of egg to flour when making fresh pasta dough, and the best I could find online was the classic ratio: 100g flour for each egg. It sounds simple and easy in theory, but in practice, it’s not perfect. Eggs vary in weight by a few grams, so when using that ratio your pasta dough can come out a little different every time you make it, requiring adjustments with flour or water. I spent some time testing out different ratios of egg to flour by weight and worked out the perfect ratio to make the best pasta from scratch.
To make fresh homemade pasta dough that is consistent each and every time you make it, you need a ratio that also weighs the egg. This is because the weight of an egg varies between about 50 and 70g. This type of recipe makes it foolproof and great for beginners because you don’t need to worry about adding a teaspoon of water to add additional liquid if the dough is too dry or add an extra tablespoon of flour if the dough is too wet.
It’s a perfect ratio to make a consistent pasta dough every time. Weighing the ingredients removes variables and each ingredient is controlled. It makes making pasta dough easy.
Do You Need To Crack Eggs Before Weighing Them?
Yes, you should crack the eggs before weighing them. Since the shells add extra weight that wouldn’t be used in the dough, you only want to weigh the liquid part of the egg.
Do I Need To Knead The Dough By Hand After?
It’s not necessary to knead the dough more by hand if you made it in a food processor. The spinning blade of the food processor most likely kneaded the dough enough. After you make the dough in the food processor, just wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for at least a half hour before you feed it through your pasta machine.
How Do You Thin Out Fresh Pasta Dough?
To roll out fresh pasta dough using a pasta machine, use a rolling pin to flatten the dough enough for it to fit the slot in the pasta machine. About half an inch should be thin enough to feed into the machine. Once you’ve done that, you can feed the dough into the pasta machine to roll it out into a sheet of fresh pasta. Start on the widest setting and work your way thinner, feeding the dough through each width setting twice until you reach your desired thickness.
Calculating Ingredients For A Consistent Pasta Dough
I started testing the formula with 1.65 grams of flour to 1 gram of egg, but that came out way too wet and soft. For homemade pasta dough, you want a dense dough that borders crumbling apart if you were to add just a little more flour. After a few iterations of trying between 1.75 and 2 grams per 1 gram of egg, I settled on 1.95 grams of flour per gram of egg using half semolina and half all-purpose flour by weight. So, how do you figure out how much of each ingredient is needed to make some homemade pasta dough?
The Formula
All that is needed is to do a little quick math. Three quick steps:
- Weigh the liquid egg in grams.
- Second, take that number and multiply it by 1.95. The resulting number is the total number of grams of flour that is needed.
- Then, divide that number in half to calculate how many grams of semolina and all-purpose flour to use.
For Example:
Assuming there are 200 grams of liquid egg from four large eggs.
200 x 1.95 = 390 grams of total flour.
390 grams total flour / 2 = 195 grams each of semolina and all-purpose flour
To bring it all together to make our dough, we’ll use 200 grams of liquid egg, 195 grams of all-purpose flour, and 195 grams of semolina.
If the number isn’t whole when you do your calculation, just round up or round down to the nearest gram. It’s less complicated than it might seem at first and you’ll have it memorized soon enough after you do it a few times, I promise you that. Calculating and weighing the ingredients up front saves you a ton of troubleshooting, especially in the beginning when you aren’t familiar with how pasta dough should be.
Now that you have your ingredients, it’s time to make the fresh pasta dough!
Note: This ratio was created for using half semolina and half all-purpose flour by weight. It most likely won’t be the same if you attempt to substitute for different flours. Different flours require different levels of hydration to achieve the same result.
Tools For The Job:
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A food processor capable of mixing dense dough.
Any kind of bowl large enough to hold the ingredients. I like to use stainless steel mixing bowls like these.
A gram scale for weighing ingredients.
A Whisk for the eggs, but you can also use a fork.
A rolling pin, a hand-cranked pasta machine, or mechanical KitchenAid stand mixer pasta attachments to roll the dough out into pasta.
Plastic wrap for wrapping the dough.
How To Make Fresh Pasta Dough
First, whisk together the semolina and all-purpose flour and add it to the food processor with the blade attachment. In a separate bowl, Whisk the eggs until the yolks and whites are well combined, then pour the egg into the food processor. Turn the food processor with the blade attachment to high speed and continue to process until a ball of dough forms and it starts to roll around inside the food processor.
Take care not to overwork the machine. For reference, I use a 550-watt food processor with a 14-cup capacity. With this, I can comfortably make four eggs worth of dough in one batch. If you have a smaller capacity or a less powerful machine, adjust the recipe to work in smaller batches as needed.
After the fresh pasta dough is made, wrap it up in plastic wrap so that it doesn’t dry out, then leave it to rest on the counter for at least 30 minutes before working with it. This is needed to relax the proteins in the dough so that the pasta machine can roll it out easier and for the moisture from the eggs to more evenly spread throughout the pasta dough and absorb into the flour.
After the homemade pasta dough has rested, it can be rolled out into any shape or run through a pasta machine to make fresh pasta sheets. This fresh pasta dough recipe can be used to make ravioli, lasagna, fettuccine, spaghetti, tortellini, and more.
Note: This pasta dough recipe has not been tested for extrusion.
One egg’s worth of dough will make a generous serving of pasta for a single person if making spaghetti or fettuccine alfredo. If making ravioli, four eggs worth of dough will make around 108 ravioli if using the KitchenAid Ravioli Maker and Pasta Sheet Roller Attachments. If planning to make Nonna’s Best Vegetarian Lasagna Recipe using this fresh pasta dough, you’ll need at least three large eggs worth of dough.
| Pasta | Al Dente |
| Spaghetti | Boil 90-120 seconds* |
| Fettuccine | Boil 140-180 seconds* |
| Lasagna | Boil 45-60 seconds before baking, though not necessary.* |
How This Fresh Pasta Looks
Left: Pasta dough rolled out to setting 4 on the KitchenAid pasta roller attachment, then fed through the spaghetti cutter attachment. Right: Pasta dough rolled out to setting 4, then fed through the fettuccine cutter attachment; both photos are before boiling.
What’s cooking?
Fresh Pasta Dough Recipe
Ingredients
- 1.95 grams flour per 1 gram egg, using half all-purpose flour and half semolina by weight (see above for instructions on calculation)
Instructions
Calculating Ingredients
- Place a bowl on a gram scale, and tare it to set the scale to zero.
- Crack eggs into the bowl to weigh the liquid egg in grams.
- Multiply the grams by 1.95.
- Divide that number by two.
- Weigh out that much in all-purpose and semolina flours by weight, respectively.
To Make The Dough
Add the all-purpose and semolina flour to a food processor and pulse a few times to mix.
Add beaten eggs and process on high until it forms into a nice ball of dough.
Turn off the machine, remove the dough and wrap it in plastic wrap, then allow the dough to rest for at least 30 minutes before rolling and shaping it into your favorite pasta either by hand with a rolling pin, with your Marcato Atlas 150 pasta machine, or the KitchenAid pasta attachments.
Boil prepared pasta noodles in heavily salted water and enjoy.
Note: This pasta dough recipe has not been tested for use with a pasta extruder, so extrude at your own risk. This ratio was created and intended for using half semolina and half all-purpose flour by weight. It most likely won’t be the same if you attempt to substitute with different flours. Different flours require different levels of hydration to achieve the same result. You can make this dough a few days in advance, it will stay fresh in the fridge for up to 2 days.
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