We recently got a pasta roller attachment for our KitchenAid stand mixer so I’ve been playing around with making different pasta. This attempt uses olive oil packed sun dried tomatoes that have been pureed and then combined with the rest of the ingredients. The tomatoes give it a really nice color and flavor.

While this isn’t bread and doesn’t use yeast, I still wanted to add this recipe to the site since, to me, it falls under the same umbrella. Pasta is extremely easy to make and shouldn’t be intimidating. While the use of a stand mixer, plus the pasta attachment, makes it even easier, you can still make great pasta with a mixing bowl and a rolling pin.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 Tbsp cornmeal
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup olive oil packed sun dried tomatoes
• pinch of salt
• 1-2 Tbsp water (optional)

I didn’t have any semolina flour so I added 2 Tbsp of cornmeal to imitate some of the bite. If you do have semolina flour, you can use 1 cup of AP flour and 3/4 cup of semolina flour.

Method:

The first thing you’ll want to do is measure out your sun dried tomatoes and add them to a Cuisinart or blender. Blend the tomatoes until they’re very finely chopped. You don’t want any chunks or else it’ll interfere with the pasta rolling and cutting process.

After you’ve blended the tomatoes as much as you can, add 1 cup of flour to the blender and pulse about 10 times to incorporate the flour and the tomatoes. This also makes it easier to remove from the blender since it turns the flour into the consistency of moist sand.

Pour the tomato/flour mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer and then add the rest of the ingredients. With the dough hook or paddle attachment, beat / knead the dough together for 5-7 minutes. If the dough still seems dry, add water 1 Tbsp at a time until it gets smoother.

The dough won’t form a ball on its own, so after beating/kneading it, dump the clumps onto a floured work surface and form it into a ball. Next, wrap the ball in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes.

Once the dough has rested, cut it into four equal parts and flatten them out so they’ll fit through the widest roller setting on your pasta roller. Pass each dough puck through the rollers several times each. Make sure to liberally coat the resulting sheet of dough with flour to keep it from sticking to anything. Repeat this process with all four dough pucks.

Next, reduce the roller width by two notches and repeat the above process. On my rollers I went from setting 1 to setting 3. After each sheet has been rolled on setting 3, reduce the width two more notches and roll each one again. The sheets will start getting really long so be sure to handle them carefully so they don’t tear.

To make the next step easier, I cut each sheet in half. Remove the roller attachment and put on the fettuccini attachment. I like the fettuccini style pasta when I’m adding other ingredients to it. The spaghetti attachment will gum up a lot easier when you start adding other ingredients to the pasta.

Pass each sheet (now 8 of them) through the fettuccini roller and then toss the resulting pasta liberally in flour. Set the floured pasta to the side while you repeat this process for the remaining sheets.

If you’re using your pasta immediately, add it to salted boiling water for 1-3 minutes. I usually let mine dry on a wire rack for a few hours before I need to use mine and add an extra minute if needed to the boiling time.

You can let the pasta dry overnight on the wire rack and then freeze it to use it later as well. The recipe above makes enough pasta for about 6 people to enjoy a meal.

Making a meal

I chopped up some onions, squash, broccoli and mushrooms and sauteed that with some olive oil, garlic and Italian herbs. While that was cooking, I boiled the pasta for about 3 minutes and then added it directly to the veggies.

The pasta by itself is really nice. Aside from giving it a really bright color, the sun dried tomatoes lend a lot of their tomato flavor to the pasta as well. I think rolling the pasta on setting #5 was a good thickness. I could have gone a little thinner but I would be a little scared it wouldn’t hold together as well.

I also had to make some cheesy garlic bread to go with the pasta. I used a slice of purple sweet potato bread that I recently baked.