Once the pasta dough was perfect, we let it rest for 30 minutes. In the meantime, De Luca made us dinner: salad, bruschetta and tagliatelle pasta with pesto, ricotta cheese and lemon zest and for dessert, maritozzo con la panna—a sweet roll filled with fluffy whipped cream.
We returned to the kitchen to flatten and cut our dough. This step was fun—we divided our dough into four sections, flattened each to fit the hand-crank pasta maker and fed the sheets through to get an even thickness. We adjusted the settings on the pasta maker each time to make the dough progressively thinner. Once the dough reached the desired thinness, we passed the sheets through the cut setting to slice them into flour-covered tagliatelle strips. Another tip I learned is, at this step, moisture is the enemy of good pasta dough. De Luca recommends sprinkling the cut pasta generously with rice flour to help preserve the dough—it helps keeps the noodles from sticking together.
Voila! We all went home with our homemade pasta and instructions to use any sauce. To cook the noodles, boil them for just a minute and a half. If frozen, boil for three minutes.