About Pasta-Making Techniques

Although I vastly prefer pasta totally handmade and hand-cut, I have reached that stage of my life where the whole operation becomes life threatening by the time I have finished hand-rolling the dough out as thin as I possibly can, so I now use a hybrid method. I give approximately 10 minutes of hand-kneading and finish the smoothing work with the machine. Then I roll the sheets of dough into flat cigars and cut the noodles in ¼- or ⅓-inch-wide bands, which I shake to unroll. I then put the ribbon pasta to dry. In the recipes that follow, you can do what you please; the more you do by hand the better the pasta will be.