Ingredients

There are only two ingredients needed for my pasta, eggs and flour. Sometimes, a couple drops of water may also need to be added the dough (more information on that later). Water and salt will be needed to boil the final product.

Each area of Italy and Italian family seem to have its own pasta recipe, thus there are many variations of the basic pasta recipe. For example, some areas make Bigoli which use a whole wheat flour instead of white flour. Other pasta recipe variations may call for using oil and water rather than egg. If making an "authentic" Italian pasta dish, you may want to use the pasta recipe for the area the dish originated.

Eggs Try to obtain the freshest eggs possible. The fresher the eggs, the better the final product. I usually use Extra Large Grade A eggs. Large Grade A eggs will work fine, but makes slightly less pasta.
Flour Cake flour works best, but is expensive. Regular unbleached flour works almost as well. The difference is so small that I usually use unbleached flour. Semolina flour is too coarse to make into pasta at home. Semolina may break a home pasta machine and takes Herculean effort to roll out. Besides, I believe semolina pasta does not taste as good, so save semolina for baking bread.
Water (to be used in the pasta) If after combining the flour and eggs the pasta is too dry, a couple of drops of water may be added to the dough to bring the dough to the correct consistency.
Water (to cook the pasta in) Pasta cooks best cooked in large quantities of water.
Salt Kosher salt will be added to the water the pasta is cooked in. Ordinary table salt will work fine, but I prefer Kosher salt in my cooking so I never have any regular table salt around. Enough of salt will be needed to make the water the pasta cooks in taste like seawater.

Proceed to Dough

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