Rolling and Cutting Dough for Noodles

Stendere e Tagliare la Pasta

Appears in

The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Italian Cuisine

By International Culinary Center , French Culinary Institute , Cesare Casella and Stephanie Lyness

Published 2021

About

Traditionally, fresh pasta was rolled by hand. The dough was progressively thinned and stretched to the desired thickness with a wooden dowel. Once thinned, the dough was cut into strips with a knife. Pasta machines (manual and electric) accomplish this task by rolling the dough through metal rollers to decreasing thicknesses, producing a long sheet of dough that is cut into strips on the machine, or by hand into whatever shape is desired.

In this curriculum, students roll the dough with a pasta machine. Unless making filled pasta, it is practical to roll all of the dough through each setting before moving to the next setting. While rolling, if the strips get too long to manage comfortably, they are cut in half, or into smaller segments, and worked one segment at a time. A bowl of bench flour is kept on the side of the workstation, so that dough may easily be sprinkled with flour if it feels sticky. In order to prevent clumps of flour being rolled into the dough, excess flour is always brushed off the dough sheets after sprinkling. To hold the finished rolled and cut pasta, sheet pans are lined with parchment paper, and sprinkled with semolina to prevent sticking.