Eggless Semolina Pasta Dough
June 19, 2020 | By Jeremy Scheck | 10 Comments
I was fortunate to learn how to make fresh pasta from a true expert, Sfoglina Simonetta Capotondo. Simonetta is an artisan pasta maker from Ancona, Italy who visited the US last summer to teach a high-end Italian restaurant chain new pasta shapes and techniques. Simonetta won 2nd place in all of Italy for the best professional handmade pasta. I was lucky enough to attend half a dozen of her workshops and it became my new obsession. This is vegan.
[READ!] Important Pasta Facts:
- Generally speaking, from the center of Italy to the north, pasta is made with eggs and 00 flour. From the center down to the south, it’s made with just semolina flour and water.
- Semolina flour and 00 flour are both made from wheat, but they differ in their levels of protein, “hardness”.
- Many recipes mix the flours, but a “purist” approach from Bologna (considered an epicenter of Italian egg pasta) only uses 00 flour.
Eggless Semolina Pasta
Ingredients
- [AS A RATIO by weight]: 2 parts remilled semolina flour to 1 part water and a pinch of salt. Make sure to weigh the flour -- the ratio would not work by volume in cups.
- The type of flour is very important. You need "remilled semolina flour" sometimes called farina di semola rimcinata, depending on the brand. Caputo or Bob's Red Mill are good brands.
Instructions
- Dump the flour onto a work surface in one single mass. Use a small bowl or your fingers to create room in the middle for the water with a ring of flour as a barrier.
- Using a fork, gradually add the flour from the inside of the wall, still mixing with the fork.
- Once the middle of your mixture has a decent amount of flour mixed in, meaning it's no longer in danger of running all over the table, you can start kneading -- preferably with a bench scraper at first while it's still very sticky.
- Knead vigorously for 10 minutes straight (set a timer!), turning 90º often to try to keep a single seam on top. When the dough is totally smooth, form a ball and cover with a bowl.
- Let it sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. The flour will hydrate and the gluten will relax.
- Cut the dough and roll shapes as you please.
- If you're not using your fresh pasta within the same day, freeze it in a Tupperware. You can boil it from frozen. Fresh pasta can cook in 30s-2mins in heavily-salted boiling water. It's done when it floats and makes lots of white bubbles in the water. The frozen pasta will take a bit longer to cook.
Video Tutorials
Jeremy Scheck spent high school perfecting his signature cupcakes, making quiches and coffee cake by the dozen at a local bakery, and teaching cooking demonstrations at Williams-Sonoma. As a 10th grader in 2016, he began documenting his favorite recipes on a blog called The After School Bakery. In college, Jeremy learned to make 50 gallons of ice cream in the food science lab, how to prune grape vines in the teaching vineyard, the best way to milk a cow in Northern Italy, and why film photography is an art worth saving. As a sophomore in 2020, he traded blog photos for video and became a TikTok culinary sensation. Jeremy has been featured on the Today show, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, BBC Radio, People, and Access Hollywood, among others. Jeremy is a graduate of Cornell University with a double major in Spanish and Italian, and significant coursework in food science. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. Learn more about Jeremy.
Amazing! I’m not vegan but I love to make Vegan dishes for fun and this one is great 🙂 love all of Jeremy’s recipes
This was so easy to make and tasted so good! 100x better than store bought pasta. Does take a bit of practice to really get down, but once you do it’s so simple!
Super easy to make the dough! This recipe turns out perfect every time. The shapes take a little practice but once you’ve made them a few times it gets easier.
This recipe was a game changer for my family and I! I made it once and the next day my dad came back from the shops with three kilos of semolina flour. It was a huge success, definitely one of my family’s favourite out of all the recipes I tried during the quarantine! I had to move away from home to continue my studies so I ended up leaving two kilos of frozen semolina pasta for them to eat while I’m away. We spent my last evening with them making orecchietes and fork gnocchis. Great recipe and super easy to follow! Making the shapes is almost therapeutic, I love it.
I had never made my own pasta before and Jeremy’s recipe and tips on how to make it were wonderful. I tried my hand at orecchiette and they were AMAZING! Thanks Jeremy for upping my cooking game!
Do you have a specific brand of Semolina flour you use?? I’m really excited to try this!
How much flour do you use per person (approximately)?
100g is a good amount per person (generous)
Doskonała robota, którą wykonałeś, ta strona internetowa jest naprawdę fajna i zawiera fantastyczne informacje.
Can you make ravioli with this dough?