What’s a pasta maker?

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A pasta maker is a kitchen tool designed to facilitate the production of pasta; you may also know it as a pasta machine. Pasta makers allow people to make a variety of fresh pasta types at home, from linguine to ravioli. Many kitchen supply stores carry pasta machines, especially if they focus on Italian cuisine, and they can also be ordered from various manufacturers; many models are relatively inexpensive and very easy to learn to use.

A basic pasta maker is designed to be bolted to a countertop. It has a number of fittings including rollers for rolling out dough and cutters to cut sheets of rolled out dough. Typically a crank or handle is designed to be attached to one side of the pastry cutter for the purpose of turning rollers or cutting blades. Many pasta makers also have an attachment for making filled pasta.

To use a dough maker, the cook prepares the desired dough and then breaks it into pieces. The pieces are passed through the pasta maker on rollers, which can be moved progressively closer together to adjust the thickness of the pasta sheet. For something like lasagna, the dough would be left relatively thick, while thin pastas could be rolled through the smallest setting.

Once the dough has been rolled out to the desired thickness, it takes the form of a long slab of dough which can be passed through the cutting attachment on the dough cutter. Many pasta makers come with a number of predefined cutting attachments that produce a range of pasta shapes. The finished strips of dough can be cooked immediately, refrigerated for a few days or left to dry.

There are many other ways to use a pasta machine. The strips can be left whole, for example, to make something like lasagna, or they can be cut into pieces to make filled, handmade pasta. Some people pinch the strips to make butterflies or curl them to make various shell-shaped pastas. It is also possible to whip up a ravioli that attaches to the pasta machine. To use this attachment, a sheet of pasta is placed on top of the attachment, the filling is spread over the pasta and another sheet is placed on top before the layers are forced through the pasta machine, which compresses them into sealed squares and cut.

With the use of an attached machine called a pasta extruder, pasta shapes can be made, using molds that fit onto one end of a hollow cylinder. The dough is forced through the cylinder and the molds shape it into various shapes such as wheels and pens. Many companies make pasta extruders and molds to go with them, for cooks willing to experiment with the wide range of pasta shapes.

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