Thomas Keller's Seven Yolk Pasta Dough

I love making things from scratch.  If I were to ever open a restaurant, I would make everything from scratch - from the rolls on the table, the salad dressings and the pasta.  I've never understood why more restaurants don't make more things in house.  But that's another post for another day.

After our two-month hiatus from the blog we're back with this recipe for pasta dough.  I've made pasta dough from scratch before and it turned out really well, but I came across this recipe from Thomas Keller when looking around the Internet's pantry.  Anything I stumble across from Keller I want to try, especially when I can make it with things I have on hand.  So here we go - my attempt at Thomas Keller's seven yolk pasta.

Ingredients:

8 ounces of flour (I used whole wheat)

6 egg yolks

1 egg

1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil

1 tablespoon of milk

Directions:

The directions call for placing your flour on the counter, making a well in the middle for your wet ingredients and mixing by hand slowly.  For lack of available counter space, I turned to our handy-dandy Kitchenaid mixer to start it out.  I put the flour in and made the well, added the wet ingredients but let the dough hook kick things off.

It worked OK - but the centuries old counter top method is probably best, space permitting.  When the dough comes together (Sidebar - if you've made bread dough, this will not be the same.  It will be moist, but not sticky and a LOT firmer) turn the dough out on a cutting board and shape into a ball.  Knead the dough by pressing the palm of your hand into the dough, flattening it out.  Reshape it into the ball and repeat.  You will do this for about 73 years - or so it will feel like.  I did it (with The Wife coming in as back up) for about 20 minutes.  The recipe talks about some kind of pull test that never happened in my kitchen.

In any event, once you've kneaded for about 20 minutes, cover the ball of dough in olive oil and wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest on the counter for one hour.  You do this so the dough will not dry out.

Now comes the fun part if you don't have a pasta machine (and we do not.)  You've got to flatten that sucker out to proper pasta thinness.  I recommend cutting the ball in half and using a rolling pin.

Flatten it out with your hand, the roll with your rolling pin.  When it gets as big as your cutting board, cut the sheet in half again.

and using your rolling pin, flatten out the halves.

I found this to be a good thickness.

Flour the sheet of pasta and roll the sheet up like a jelly roll and cut to your desired thickness.

Store in a bowl (not long term), tossed with flour until you're ready to cook.  This will keep them from sticking together.  Cook immediately - or freeze what you don't cook.  Just be sure to toss with more flour before you freeze.

I used this for carbonara, adding some spring peas.

Enjoy!