(Serves 4-6)
1 tsp Salt
1 tblsp Olive Oil
5 eggs, lightly beaten
Create a mound of the flour on a clean work surface, cutting board or mat. Make a well in the center of your flour and add the remaining ingredients.
Slowly work the flour into the wet mixture by pulling the flour in from the inner edges first and then from the outside edges as the mixture gets less liquidy and more like a dough.
Knead the dough for about 20 minutes or until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Keep your hands floured and board floured.
Divide the dough into two or three pieces and one at a time, using a rolling pin, roll into thin long rectangles. Flour the top and bottom of the rectangle or sheet. Do the same for the remaining pieces of dough.
If you have a pasta machine, you can start feeding the sheet into the machine at the lowest setting first (1) and work your way up to (6) remmebring to flour the sheet on every pass through the machine and settings.
You can use the cutter attachment on your pasta machine to make fettucini or spaggetti. (These are the two most common cutters that usually come with a pasta machine).
If you don't have a pasta machine, you'll be mimicing what the machine would do, making the sheet of dough, thinner and thinner, gradually. Flouring the sheet several times while getting it thinner. When at the thinnest before breaking the sheet, you can now cut the pasta with a knife in 12 inch lengths at what ever width you prefer. (Wide for Egg Noodles, Thin for Cappelini).
No matter if you have a machine or not, it is best practice to hang the finished pasta on a drying rack (I used the edge of a giant stock pot). Hanging the pasta does two main things, one it can start drying the pasta so you can handle it easier and two it helps when adding it to the boiling water so the pasta doesn't stick together or make one big dough ball that never cooks!
In a large pot of boiling, salted water (they say it should be salted like the sea!), add your pasta and stir, making sure the pasta does not stick together.
Check doneness after 2 minutes, usually takes 2-4 minutes depending on how you like it!