The Easiest Homemade Pasta (Strozzapreti)

80 g high-protein flour per serving
49% of the weight of the flour in room-temp water (see video for calculations)
see video for kneading and shaping instructions

Guinea Pig Pasta

Flour: https://amzn.to/4ilFzIW

Welcome back to the kitchen, guys. Today we’re doing our first installment of our homemade pasta series. Now, we are going to be making all of our flat pastas in this series, al materelloo. That means with a rolling pin. It’s a great way to make pasta. It doesn’t beat the dough up. It doesn’t squeeze all the air out. It gives it wonderful texture, wonderful bite. It really is the best way to make homemade pasta. And the great thing is you don’t need a machine. All you need is a rolling pin. So, it’s an awesome way to get started learning how to make homemade pasta. It’s the most traditional method. We’re going to start from the ba most basics and we’re going to build up. So in this episode we’re going to be making a fina aqua dough which means flour and water. No eggs. This is your most basic dough. We’re going to start from here. We’ll build to the more complex things as we go. Now I’ve got my flour and my water already measured out. I’m going to show you guys how to do this. So flour and water. It couldn’t be easier. It’s not really a recipe. You just have to get the right hydration on your flour. We’re always going to start with a high protein flour. I’m using Antimo Caputo’s pasta and flour. It’s my favorite for homemade pasta, and I’ll include a link below if you want to get some, but you don’t have to have that. Any high protein bread flour will do. Um, a store-bought one is King Arthur. It comes in the blue bag. That’s a really good option as well. But this one is my favorite flour. So, for this, we want the whole recipe. It’s just you’re going to hydrate this at 49% by weight. So, here’s all you got to know. One serving of pasta, you need 80 grams of flour. So, we got our calculator here. So, we know one serving of pasta is 80 g of flour. So, you got 80. And then you’re just going to pick how many servings you want. Today, I’m going to be making five servings. So, 80 * 5. That means we need 400 g of flour, which is what I have here. And then we need 49% of that by weight in water. So, to get that, we just take our 400 multiply by49 equals 196. So, we have 400 g of flour, 196 g of water, and that’s the whole recipe. And you can expand or contract all you want. All you know, all you need to know is you’re starting with 80. You’re multiplying by the number of people. If I had eight people, I would go times 8. I would need 640 of flour. And then to get my water, it’s times 49. I would need 313 of water. Simple as can be. Now, when making pasta dough, you want to keep your dough as dry as possible. that allows your pasta to hold its shape and to not stick together. I always say make your bread doughs as wet as possible and your pasta doughs as dry as possible. So, in order to do that, in service of that, I like to make it on the counter because it causes the flour to absorb the water more slowly. A bowl will cause all that water to go into the flour really quick and you end up with leftover flour that doesn’t get incorporated. So, flour out. Just take the bottom of your bowl, put it in the center, make a little well. F laontana, as we say in Italian, make the well. I like to take my fingers and extend that out a bit. You want plenty of space for your water so it doesn’t run on your counter. About like that. Our water, this is just cool tap water. Goes right in the center. Now, I said all you needed was your flour, your water, and your rolling pin, but you actually need a fork as well and some sort of scraper. So, we’re going to take our fork, and we’re going to start to bring some flour in a little at a time into the center. Mix it with the water. Now, the reason this works is because as you mix the flour into the water, that water is going to thicken into a batter, and that batter is not going to want to run. So, you don’t have to worry about it coming out on the table as you break down your walls. [Music] And as you can see, real quick, we’ve got that into a thick batter. It’s not going to run anymore. Get some flour on your fork. Clean it off. That’s all part of your hydration. You don’t want to lose it. Clean fork. And this is where our bench scraper comes in. We’re just going to start cutting our flour into our dough. So, just make a cross-hatch pattern. Just like that. Just like you’re if you’ve ever made biscuits and you know what it means to cut butter into flour, you’re using the same technique, creating lots of surface area for that water to absorb into the flour. [Music] You can see it’s a lot of flour. It’s going to seem very dry. You might even think it’s too dry, but trust me, it’s not. You’re going to need this dry dough when you’re rolling out pasta. Just takes a little patience to incorporate it all. Once you get it all cut in and you’re starting to form a dough, give it a few flips and presses. It’s all to keep our hands clean until it’s time to get in there. Get anything that’s stuck to the table up. Now, we’re going to move on to the knead. Just get in there with your fingers. Start pressing and turning, picking up the last of the flour. And when we’re done, we should have a totally clean countertop. Use your dough to pick up the last of the flour. You want it all in there. And now that we have all the flour, we’re going to start to knead. You want to use a motion where you pull back and roll forward, back and forward. We’re not crushing down. We’re just rolling forward. We’re starting to incorporate air. We’re folding air into the dough. And we want to keep that air in there. We don’t want to smash it all out. Air makes it nice and bouncy. It’s sort of like the old school Air Jordan tennis shoes where they had air pockets in the soles to make them more bouncy. That’s what you want from your pasta. And that’s the beauty of the mozzarella, the rolling pin. Unlike the machine which puts a lot of pressure on the dough and crushes all that air out, the rolling pin will just stretch those air bubbles through the dough, leaving them inside your final product. So you really get that al dente bite. Some people think you can’t get al dente from fresh pasta. It’s because they’re making it with a machine. I’m rolling until we get a cylinder. And then I turn it 90°, fold it back, and do the same. Once again, it’s a cylinder. 90°, fold it back, trapping air in it each time, pressing it forward. [Music] Now, after about a 5minute knead, you’re going to start to see this kind of craggly surface, right? The dough is has totally absorbed the flour, but the flour hasn’t fully hydrated yet. The gluten, the proteins are starting to develop. That’s what gives you that cragginess. And that lets us know that we’re at the stage where it’s time to rest. Rest will let it fully hydrate. We’ll let the glutens fully develop. And then we’ll be able to give it just another one minute or so knead and we’ll have perfectly smooth dough. So I’m gonna wrap this up. It’s got a piece of plastic wrap. Slap that in the center. Wrap it up tight. Don’t want air getting on it. Going to set a timer for 15 minutes. We’ll be back for a one more minute knead. 15 minutes is up, guys. As you can see, we still have a very rough looking dough, but it’s had time to hydrate and those gluten’s had time to develop. So, let’s see what happens when we give it another quick knead. Like I said, just like a minute. So, we’re going to finish this knead by kind of just turning in a circle to get it kneaded into a round ball. We want it to be nice and round for this resting stage. It’s going to help it roll out even later if it’s really evenly round now. And there we can see perfectly smooth. It’s elastic. It’s going to make a beautiful pasta dough. We do have to let those glutens rest. Again, though, it takes at least 1 hour, preferably two. If you have 2 hours, let it rest, too. But at least 1 hour so that everything will relax. It’ll get very stretchy and we can roll it out nice and thin. So, wrap it back up. You don’t want it to dry out. I’m going to let it rest a couple hours and we’ll be back to make some pasta. All right, guys. We are rested and ready to roll. Things that you will need. a rolling pin and a glass of wine. That is a prerequisite for making pasta. And out of those two, the only one that actually is necessary is the glass of wine because few months ago, I made pasta by hand for 20 people and I rolled it out with nothing but a bottle of wine. So, you can even do without the rolling pin if you have to. Now, I said we were going to graduate as we go through this series, not just today, but as we go through this series, we’re going to graduate up in complexity. So, we will get other tools mixed in. If you want to become a real pastio at home, if you want to become a real home pasta maker and you’re going to be doing it a lot, we will graduate up from this to this bad boy right here. This is the real Italian mozzarella for pasta. This is about 3 ft long. And the reason we use one this long is just because it covers more surface area so we can do things faster. But obviously, you’re not going to go out and buy one of these until you’ve learned a little bit about how to roll out pasta. So, starting with a regular rolling pin is just fine, or even a wine bottle because it works. But eventually, if you do this a lot, you’re going to want a big boy so you can do it quick. And the other thing you might consider investing in if you do this a lot is a pastry board. The reason being, it’s just easier to roll things out on wood. The wood is absorbent. It absorbs moisture away from the pasta, and it just makes it roll that much easier, and it makes it dry better, too. It also gives it a nicer, rougher texture on the outside, which helps it cling to sauce. So, eventually, if you do this a lot, you’ll want to get a pastry board and you’ll want to get a big mozzarella. But for today, we’re using our countertop and just a regular rolling pin. All right, let’s get to it. Let’s get it unwrapped. A little bit of extra flour you’re going to need, especially if you’re on a regular countertop that isn’t wood, but even on the wood, you’ll need a little extra flour. Get a little bit down. Don’t go crazy with it. People put way too much flour and it gets all gunky. You don’t need it. This dough has been made very dry, so you’re not going to have a lot of problems with sticking. Little more flour on top. Really, you mostly need it just at the start. We’re going to start by pushing this down with our hands just to flatten it out a little bit before we switch over to our mozzarella. Wedding rings off. Now, the key to making this nice and even is we’re going to work from the middle out and we’re gonna turn it as we go. So, we’re just going to start in the middle and push forward. And then we’re going to turn it a quarter turn. Middle forward. Quarter turn. Middle forward. Trying to maintain the round shape of the ball. And maintaining that round shape. Although it’s not essential, it just helps you know that you’re rolling everything out evenly. And that’s just a good sign. So, we’re going to keep doing this using this quarter turn method as we go. dough gets flatter and flatter. The water and flour dough rolls out really easily. It’s not as stiff as an egg dough. Now, we’re keeping our hands on the outer edges of the pasta, trying not to intrude too much into the dough. That helps to keep it even. And you can see now that it’s starting to get a little bit wider, I’m starting to let it hang a little bit off the counter. And we’re going to do that more and more as we go. Just helps the pasta grip the counter. It’s like a counter weight. So, as you push forward, that pulls back. I go straight ahead at first and then I go from 10:00 to 2:00. Rolling it out like this. Rolling it out like this. I never come past that. I always stay between 10 and two. Keeping things even allows me to put my weight into it. Then we do another quarter turn. I’m starting to feel it getting a little sticky underneath, especially on this marble counter. So, I’m going to give it a little flip. Throw a touch more flour. Again, small amounts of flour. And rub it all over. Don’t want big gobs. [Music] You may also notice I’m not rolling all the way over the edge of the pasta cuz if you go over the lip, you crush that edge and you make it way too thin. So I roll only up to the edge and then I come back and those edges will get rolled out when they become the side. You see now that it’s over the side, it’s not crushing down. So that edge gets rolled as I turn. [Music] Little sticky underneath. Give it another flip. [Music] Going to get both sides. And you can kind of just feel your dough. Feel where it’s thicker and where it’s thinner and see where you have to work. [Music] And I’m already starting to see, and I don’t know if it shows up on camera, but I’m starting to be able to see the marble of the counter through the dough. That’s a good sign that we’re starting to get thin enough. It’ll become more and more transparent. And different pasta shapes call for different thicknesses. But in general, when it’s transparent, you’re getting to a good place. [Music] When you flip it, make sure there’s no air bubbles underneath cuz those can cause creases when you roll over them. [Music] See, we’re maintaining a nice round shape. It’s not going to be a perfect circle, but a nice round shape. So, we know that we’re rolling it out evenly. We are starting to get pretty thin. I think I’m going to go a little thinner. I don’t know if you guys can see on camera. Can’t quite see my hand coming through yet, but we’re getting close. And as it gets thin, it’ll start to get delicate. So, when you handle it, handle it more with your palms and not so much your fingertips so they don’t poke through. [Music] Let’s [Music] get a look. See? Looking very nice. very thin, very pliable. A little bit of thickness. I can see, and again, on camera it might not be as noticeable, but I can see with my eyes that it’s a little bit thicker over here than it is on this side. So, I’m going to give that a turn. Little bit more rolling just to even it all out. Looking really nice. This is very pliable, very light. You can see it just kind of catches the wind. I think on camera you can see that the marble showing through. You can really see the imprint of my hand. In Bolognia, where pasta making reaches probably its highest art in Italy, they always say sde vere San Luca. That means one must see St. Luke’s. St. Luke’s is a cathedral, a basilica. I actually believe it’s up on the hill overlooking the city. And their test of if their pasta is thin enough is they hold the sheet up to the window of their apartment and if you can see the outline of the Basilica of Sanluca through the sheet, you know your sheet is thin enough. We don’t have a San Luca, but I can see the marble. All right, so I know we’re good. I want to let this dry a little bit before I cut it up. So I’m just going to go maybe about 3 minutes per side. I’ll let this rest for 3 minutes. Then I’ll flip it over, let it rest another three, and then we’re going to cut it to shape. And you know, guys, look at this. Just a rolling pin. That took about 5 minutes. This is five good size servings worth of pasta. Once you get the hang of this, it’s actually faster than the machine cuz the machine can only handle so much pasta at once. So a dough ball this size, you would have to cut into like at least three pieces to feed it through. So you have to go through again and again and again. And it just takes a lot of time. But when you’re using a rolling pin, you do the whole sheet at once. It’s actually faster than the machine. 3 minutes per side is not a super long drying time. We’re leaving this dough a little bit tacky because of the shape we’re making. Different pasta shapes require different amounts of drying. And like I said, as we move through this series, you’re going to learn more stuff. So, you’ll learn the dopia augura, which means the double drying technique that we use for things like tateellle or kitara. Um, that’s a little bit of a longer double drying technique. This is a quick dry cuz we’re leaving it a little tacky because today we are making a shape called stroeti stroeti actually translates to priest stranglers. It’s a very basic handmade shape. That’s why we’re starting with it. It works really well for the fina aqua the the flour and water dough. There’s a million inventive names for pastas in Italy and there’s a million stories about how the pasta got that name. So I’m just going to tell you one of probably my favorite one for this shape. It’s a wacky story and I don’t know if it’s true at all, but supposedly the town that this was originally invented in, they were famous because uh they had a local priest and uh one of the things small towns would do is you were expected to feed your local priest. Like he could stop by any house for dinner. And um they had a priest that was uh pretty pretty abusive and he he would abuse his power and he would come over. or he would always wait for someone to make things that uh cost a lot of money and he would eat a whole lot of it. And he was known for being um kind of avaricious. And uh one day he got too avaricious with a local person’s daughter. And that person waited till he came over for dinner, rolled up a towel, and strangled him with it. And this shape of pasta looks like little rolled up towels, hence the name priest stranglers. Now, I don’t know if that’s the true story or not. That’s just what I heard. It’s a funny little story. But anyway, that is what this pasta shape we’re going to do is called stroeti, the priest stranglers. All right, guys. We are dry. It’s time to cut. Little bit of flour before we cut. Again, being very sparing with it. Rub it all over. [Music] We’re going to roll from the bottom halfway up and from the top halfway in. So you’ll see just like this. Just going to make it easier for us. Let me grab a cutting board. I don’t want to cut on my marble. Now we’re going to cut this into 1 in thick strips just like this. The reason we roll it like that is so we can slide the knife underneath. Just pick them up so that they roll back out. Because this is what we want. We want long strips. [Music] Cutting boards no longer necessary. Now the way to make throati. They look like a rolled up towel, right? So, you’re just going to take this. It’s rolling up like a towel. Just roll it in one direction on my hand. I’ve got a rolled up little towel of dough. I pinch it off. And that’s a finished throat preti stroto cuz it’s only one roll. Pinch. Done. Super simple pasta shape. We’re going to work our way through each little strip just doing the same thing. Roll. Pinch, roll, pinch. Couldn’t be easier. I’ve got a funny kind of personal story about this pasta. You know, I’m Italian. I’m an Italian citizen. I speak Italian. Um, but there’s so many pasta shapes and you don’t always know them all. And when I was younger, I didn’t know them all. Um, and I was working my first restaurant job here in New York City, little place called Issa. And I went in early one day to get some prep work done by myself. If I had a key, I let myself in. I’m in the kitchen all alone getting some prep work done. All of a sudden, the kitchen printer kicks on and it just prints out one ticket. And I’m in this restaurant by myself and I’m like, why why is the printer on? What did it print out? And I go over and I look at the ticket and it just has one word on it and the word is just stroi. And as an Italian speaker who wasn’t familiar with this pasta shape, all I saw was an empty restaurant with me by myself in a kitchen and the printer said, “Strangle priests.” And I thought that printer was possessed by the devil and I was peeking around corners. I was yelling out, “Hello.” totally scared the pants off me until the head chef who had been upstairs in the office unbeknownst to me came walking in and explained to me that he had just entered a new dish into the computer upstairs and that was a sample printout and he explained to me what stroi was and I felt a whole lot better after that. [Music] This is a really easy shape to get the hang of, but if you are going slow at first, just keep an eye on your on your strips of pasta. If they start to get a little dry, my suggestion is take a clean, new, nonscented garbage bag, which is just a clean piece of plastic cuz it hasn’t had any garbage in it. And you can just pop that over the top of those strips to keep them from drying out. But my guess is you’ll probably be able to do it quick enough that that’s not going to happen. Um, you’re just rolling them up and tearing them, you know. Just a tip if you need it. And try not to have them cross over each other when you lay them on the counter. little space between each one so that they can dry. [Music] We are down to our last strip. That did not take long at all. Didn’t take long to roll it out with that rolling pin. Doesn’t take long to roll them into strotti. I don’t know if it looks like a lot on the counter through the camera, but trust me, this is five healthy servings of pasta. Five Italian servings of pasta. We are all done. Now, you can let these dry for as little as 5 minutes just to let them hold their shape. Or you can let them dry for several hours until they’re completely dried out in case you want to store them either in the fridge for a few days in an airtight container or in the freezer for a few months. We’re actually going to be cooking these today, so I’m not going to let them dry for too long. I made these specifically to pair with our qui ragu, our qui pasta sauce. There’s another video for that. I’m going to link to it below and at the end of this video. It’s really great. It is in fact guinea pig, but it’s not the kind of guinea pig that’s your pet. It’s a guinea pig that they that they breed for meat. It’s a it’s a staple of Peruvian cuisine. It’s considered a delicacy there. I found some here in New York. Queens has a lot of Peruvian population and I really wanted to try it. I noticed it tasted a lot like rabbit. So, I made it into like an Italian rabbit ragu, which I’m going to pair with this beautiful pasta. It’s worth checking out. Even if you don’t want to make it, watch that video. What’s really cool, even if you can’t get qui, you can get rabbit and you can use rabbit to make the exact same sauce if you want. So, this pasta pairs really well with meat sauces with regu because of the way that the rolled up shape works. It really kind of traps those little pieces of meat and there’s a great bite. So, it’s awesome. Um, I’m going to let this dry a little bit and then we’re going to boil it off and we are going to pair it with our quiz sauce. [Music] I got some water over here boiling. Well salted water. Always salted water for pasta cuz pasta has no salt in the dough. So fresh pasta. This will probably only take a couple minutes. [Music] Pasta is done. Sauce is simmering. We’re going to get the pasta directly into the sauce. Always a good idea to get a little bit of pasta water in your sauce. The starches help everything emulsify. You want to marry the pasta with the sauce so everything’s coated. Get it all stirred together. It’s a lot of pasta. That’s why we got a big pan. And you don’t have to do this all at once. You know, you can do a few servings at a time if you like. It’s up to you. It’s always good to beat the pasta up a little bit to release those starches. See if we can do it with five servings. Here we go. [Music] All right, let’s get this on a plate and give it a taste. Moment of truth. Let’s get a plate of this. So excited. [Music] That’s the stuff, guys. Oh, man. Is that the stuff? Give him another one. That is good pasta. That is why pasta is just God’s gift to the culinary world. There’s nothing like a great plate of pasta. That’s throat supreeti. It’s got such a nice bite. It clings to the sauce. Those little twists just kind of match with the little bits of meat and catch it all on there. It’s got the nice amount of chew, fresh homemade pasta. So, there it is, guys. Stroza pretzi pasta. Such a great pairing with a with a wonderful reggu or any sauce you want for that matter. But a fabulous introduction to homemade pasta, making it all all mozzarella with the rolling pin. And remember, if you want this recipe for the qui ragu, I’m going to link it below and at the end of this video, so you can check that out, too. I hope you guys enjoyed. This is the first in a long line of homemade pasta videos. We’re going to show you all the all the shapes and all the techniques. So, make sure you stay tuned for that. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next time on Bobby’s Kitchen.