Homesteading tasks - easy homemade pasta!

Today's projects included our weekly yogurt making, cleaning the greenhouse in preparation for spring seedlings, sorting our bin of seeds saved from last year to see what we need to purchase, a long walk outside, and making our own fresh pasta!  We have made pasta before, but aren't in the habit of doing this very often. However, after making it today I'm reinspired to do this more often - it's so quick, can use versatile ingredients, and easily involves kids!  We cooked our fresh pasta right away (it only took about 4 minutes to cook "al dente"), but the pasta could also be hung to dry and used at a later time.

Here is our recipe, adapted from several sources - you can easily change it by adding fresh or dried herbs, various flours (spelt, whole wheat, rice, semolina), sundried tomatoes, spinach, and more. We used a hand-crank pasta maker to roll the dough and slice it into fettucine noodles, but you could roll with a rolling pin and cut strips or shapes (ravioli, etc) with a knife.

We used local organic flour (whole spelt, and wheat) from Oak Manor, eggs from our backyard hens, and seasoned with basil dried from our garden this past summer. 

Easy pasta dough
1 3/4 cups flour
2 eggs
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp sea salt
Additives, such as herbs, spices, dried spinach, dried tomatoes, olives, etc

Mix all ingredients, adding a little water if necessary to make a smooth dough.  Knead, and form into a ball.  Cut into four pieces, and shape into four balls.  Use lots of extra flour to keep dough from sticking.  Meanwhile, heat water to a rolling boil in a large pot and add 1 tsp salt.

Roll dough through pasta machine to flatten, or roll out with rolling pin.  Slice into noodles by pasta machine or knife.  Separate noodles by hanging over chair, or wooden rack, or simply lay on well-floured table surface.  When water is boiling, add noodles one by one into the pot.  Cook aprox. 4 minutes until done.  Drain well, season as desired!  Makes 4 large servings.