Homemade Pasta Dough

For about 1 pound of pasta; serves 3-4
Cook in boiling water for 2-4 minutes

Ingredients

1. 3 Large eggs (or 4 regular eggs), beaten to blend
2. 2 cups flour (with about 1/2 cup available to add as needed)
   1. All-purpose works just fine
   2. '00' flour makes it silkier
   3. Semolina flour for a slightly rougher texture that picks up sauce better
   4. American bread flour has more gluten, and so makes for more al dente pasta
3. 1 tablespoon olive oil
4. 1-2 teaspoons kosher salt (more salt, more independently flavorful pasta)

Steps to make the dough

1. Beat the eggs, olive oil, and salt, in a bowl
2. Two methods to make the dough:
   1. Stand mixer
      1. Mix all ingredients in the bowl of the stand mixer with your hands until it's a shaggy dough
      2. Then knead with the dough hook until it's smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.
   2. By hand
      1. Make a mound with the flour on your (clean) counter top.
      2. Make a large caldera (or "well/pit/hole" if you're a naïve plebian) in the middle, and pour in the beaten eggs
      3. Slowly mix in the flour from the sides using your hands or a fork
      4. Once the eggs are mostly mixed in and not likely to spill everywhere, bring it all together until a shaggy dough forms
      5. Knead the dough for a solid 10 minutes; likely until your arms are sore.
         1. If it's too sticky to knead, you can sprinkle extra flour on the mix as needed
      6. End result should be about the consistency play-do; tacky, but not sticky, smooth, supple, elastic, etc.
3. Tightly wrap in plastic-wrap for 30 minutes at room temperature to let the gluten rest

Storing the dough
Dough in this form can be refrigerated for up to 2 days (though I have not verified this, and most people say 1 day is best), or frozen for up to 1 month.^[1] If you freeze it, take it out to thaw in the fridge the night before you want to use it. Let it warm up from the fridge at room temperature for 30 minutes or so before you plan to use it (or not, it's not a hard and fast rule; haven't had much trouble with cold dough)

Rolling the pasta dough

I generally use a pasta press/roller to make my pasta, but I will experiment with using a roller to make the shapes.
Pasta rollers go from cheap to expensive; I was given the Marcato Atlas 150 as a gift, and it has worked out well for him, but there are a number of similar models for $30-50 from different manufacturers that are probably just fine.

When using a roller, there are generally instructions that come with them; however, for the serving size above, I have some notes.

1. If you are making long pasta from dough with 2-cups of flour, cut the ball into 4ths, not 8ths
   1. The smaller 8ths will be easier to manage, but make less-consistently shaped sheets
   2. 4ths will give you 4 longer sheets (about 16" or so) from which to cut your pasta that only taper at the ends. No one wants 16" long noodles, BUT if you cut those sheets in half, you're left with more evenly sized noodles
2. Roll out all of your pasta sheets first, THEN cut them into noodles
   1. Helps keep the noodles from binding to each other, especially critical if you have wetter dough
3. Make sure that all surfaces that contact the pasta dough are well floured, especially if they aren't porous (e.g., a slick counter top), or particularly wet noodles can get stuck and tear