Homemade Macaroni

One of my super awesome wedding shower gifts was the pasta roller and cutter attachments to the Kitchenaid mixer, which, despite repeated insistence to myself that I would break it open any day now, has sat sadly in its box for 6 embarrassing months. 

This Sunday I finally decided to try my hand at homemade macaroni, so my shiny new attachments got to show off their stuff. 

Source
Adapted from the Culinary Institute of America's "The Professional Chef"
and the instructions that came with the pasta roller and cutter attachments to the Kitchenaid Mixer

Yield
About 1 lb. of macaroni. Recipe said it served 10, but I served to to 10 members of my family, and let's just say I'm glad we made another pound of boxed linguine. Apparently it serves 10 non-Italians.

Equipment

• Stand mixer - optional. You can mix and knead by hand just as effectively, but since I didn't, the instructions will be for a stand mixer.
• Rolling pin
• Pasta roller and cutter - again optional. I used the ones that attach to the stand mixer, but there are also counter-top ones that work the same way. You can also use elbow grease and a rolling pin as my great-grandmother used to do.
• Something to dry the macaroni on, if you're going to dry it. This will take up a lot of space if you make the full 10 portions. I comically used tension rods and clotheslines which worked fine but made my dining room look like... well I don't have to tell you. Just look at the pictures below : / My great-grandmother used to lay the macaroni out on a clean sheet on the bed. Anything that keeps the macaroni spread out and in open air is fine. If you freeze it instead of drying, just make little nests, put in an air-tight container, and put in the freezer. There's no need to keep it separated, as it won't mush together in the freezer. 

Ingredients

1 lb. All-Purpose flour - if you have a scale you should measure this out, as 1 lb. of flour can take up any number of volume measurements depending on how tightly packed it is, but it ended up being just under 3 3/4 cups if you don't have a scale. 
4 Eggs
1 tsp. Salt
As needed, Water - the recipe that came with the attachments said 1 tbsp. - I ended up needing a LOT more than that. You just have to feel the dough and decide what it needs. 

Directions

Put all of the ingredients in the bowl of the stand mixer,  

and attach the flat beater to the mixing bowl.

Mix at speed 2 for 30 seconds. This is what mine came out looking like after 30 seconds, although I'm pretty sure it needed more water. 

Replace the flat beater with the dough hook,

and mix at speed 2 for 2 minutes. 

I kept adding more water until it was a little more solid.

Hand-knead for 2 minutes (I again added more water, as it was still pretty crumbly).

Cover and let it rest for at least 1 hour at room temperature. The consistency should be very smooth, in fact it probably should not have all the wrinkles that you can see in it here. 

So I decided to add a bit more water, and the consistency ended up being a lot better.

After letting it rest, divide into quarters.

Flatten the quarters somewhat with a rolling pin to make it thin enough to fit through the pasta roller.

Set the pasta roller to setting 1, and set the mixer to 2 or 4. The roller setting determines how thin it's going to be (higher number = thinner sheets), and the mixer setting determines how fast it's going to roll through. You don't want it to go too slow, but you won't be able to catch it on the other side if it's rolling through too fast. Feed the flattened pieces of dough into the rollers to knead.

This was the result of one kneading.

Fold in half and roll again,

repeating until the dough is soft and pliable.

Now set the roller to 2 and feed the sheets through again. This time they're going to be a good deal thinner, and therefore longer. Make sure you have ample space to put them as soon as they come out the other end of the roller otherwise they'll end up draping onto the floor. I didn't anticipate this before doing it, and had to quickly change my location to the dining room.

Keep increasing the roller setting until the desired thickness. The instructions that came with the attachment said fettuccine, which I had decided to make, should be rolled to a setting of 6 or 7. The picture below is the result of the 5 setting, which I thought was plenty thin, and maybe even a bit too thin. But for consistency I continued with the 5 setting for all of the sheets.

This is where I had to move into the dining room, and I laid each sheet out on a piece of wax paper on the dining room table as it was rolled out.

Replace the roller attachment with the pasta cutter attachment. My kit came with the spaghetti cutter and the fettuccine cutter, but I'm not a huge fan of spaghetti (a huge point of contention between John and I!), so I went with the fettuccine. Feed the sheets through the pasta cutter, again making sure you have somewhere to separate and lay out the pasta as it dries. 

As you can see, I had to get creative quickly. John helped me put up tension rods and a clothesline in the doorways of the dining room, which made our house look kind of like a macaroni laundry room, if there was such a thing. It worked, and we got a good laugh out it, but I think next time I'll figure something else out. 

We served it with red sauce. While the result was really the tastiest macaroni I've ever had, I sadly forgot to bring my camera to my grandmother's house, where we ate dinner, so there are no photos of the results :(  I really must get better at that...