Homemade Pasta - a surprisingly easy recipe

The other day I was scanning through one of my favourite blogs, Bread & Companatico, when I came across a recipe for buckwheat orecchiette. It was around lunchtime and I was starting to get pretty hungry and these "little ears" of homemade pasta caught my eye. They were especially perfect as we had almost nothing to eat in the house except for some cupboard ingredients and a jar of passata.

I decided to give them a go. I didn't have soy or buckwheat flour so I tried them with normal plain (all-purpose) flour, but I'd love to try it with a more exciting gluten-free flour one day. I imagine this is one of those recipes which gets better every time you make it. The joy is that it's so simple.

I changed the quantities around a bit from the original recipe (which you can find here) since I was only making it for myself. However, the quantity of dough definitely makes enough pasta for two people.

Ingredients:

1 cup plain flour (or other flour of your choice)
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1/2 teaspoon marine salt
A sauce of your choice

Step 1. Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl to form a dough. Mine was definitely a bit watery and I had to faff around adding bits of flour later, so if it looks really sticky add in a bit more flour; you should be able to handle it without getting bits of dough all over your fingers.

Step 2. Roll into a ball, cover and leave to stand for half an hour.

Step 3. With a rolling pin or your hands, stretch it out on a floured surface until it's nice and thin. If you make the bits too thick they won't cook evenly. Chop into your desired shapes either using your fingers, a knife or scissors.

Step 4. Put a bit of salt and olive oil into a pan of boiling water. Drop in your pasta pieces and boil for around 10 mins.

Step 5. Strain and serve with your favourite sauce. In the pictures I've served it with passata and stirred through some spinach and rocket.

Enjoy! This pasta is very filling (like all fresh pasta) so you really don't need that much! Most Italian fresh pasta is made with egg, so in the future I'm definitely going to try replacing the water with egg and seeing what happens.

Thanks so much to Bread & Companatico, whose recipes I use all the time.