Alan Calan wrote:
>
> I bought one of those on Sunday in anticipation of the snow storm. I
> also wanted to use up a William Sonoma credit that I had. So, what
> went wrong:
>
> I followed the recipe for egg pasta provided in the manual of the
> roller/cutters. It said 3.5 cups of flour (I used 125 grams x 3.5 or
> 437 grams), 3 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and one tablespoon of water.
> It made very dry dough that would not come together. So I started
> adding water and I'd bet all in all I added close to a 1/2 a cup or
> more.
>
> The dough seemed better. I cut it into 4 pieces and let it sit for 20
> minutes. I then made the first batch of linguini. I ran it through
> the roller till I got to five, only folding on the #1 setting. What
> should I have done next? I took out the roller and put in the
> linguini cutter. It worked pretty well even though the linguini was
> much too long. I put the linguini in a twisted pile like they do in
> videos. I just remembered there might be some you tubes on this.
>
> I put the roller back and did the next piece of dough but this time
> cutting it in half again. So now what again? do I roll out all the
> dough and then cut? That is what I did but I did not lay out the
> rolled pasta dough straight, I folded it once crossing over the end
> under it. I did that 6 times and then put in the cutter.
>
> I could not separate the dough into a straight piece again and it
> became a nightmare. I did the best I could and then put the cut
> linguini and a tent like shape. When I finished, everything stuck
> together. I guess keeping it straight would have been the best idea.
>
> I'd appreciate any technique questions. The woman in William Sonoma
> said she makes the dough on the counter, making a whole in the
> mountain of flour and putting the eggs and water in the hole and
> incorporating the flour. She said it makes for lighter pasta. I
> wonder if I used too much water.
>
> Alan

You almost certainly used too much water. Properly done, the dough will
not really come together in a coherent form until you've run it through
the rollers on #1 a number of times, folding it in half after each pass,
effectively kneading it. After a while of this the raggedy dough will
start to hold together better and become more uniform and a bit elastic.
Once it's holding together you can let it rest for a bit before rolling
it down to thickness and then running it through the cutters.