pastamakingtools

Pasta Making Tools

The two most important tools for making home made fresh pasta are a Rolling Pin and Passion. The other gadgets only help make the process a little easier.

From top clockwise:

Pasta Drying Basket: I inherited this from my late mother Gemma. Freshly made pasta was able to have plenty of ventilation when it was laid on this basket to dry.

Prima Festa Hand Made Pasta Drying Rack: This was custom hand made for me, using no electric, by a Master Amish Cabinet Maker. They fold flat for easy storage and hold an entire batch of hand made pasta.

Electric mixer with attachments: This machine is an extreme time saver and rolls and cuts as well as any method or machine on the market. I still make my dough by hand and do not use the mixer. Some things just need that personal touch.

Chitarra: This Old World pasta making device is still being manufactured. It is a harp like instrument that has two sides for cutting different sizes of pasta. A rolling pin is used to press a sheet of pasta dough through the strings, where it is caught by a slide-out middle board. The freshly cut pasta can then be dropped directly form the board into the boiling water. These are fun to use, but not the most practical way to make home made pasta.

Pasta Cutters: These hand cutters have adjustable wheels for cutting and shaping various lengths and widths of freshly rolled pasta.

Garganelli Board: This little and relatively unknown ancient device is used for making the grooves in Garganelli pasta tubes. The grooves help the sauce stick to the pasta.

Single Ravioli Press: Ravioli hand held presses are made in various shapes. This device is pressed down on Ravioli to give them a final shape before boiling.

Manual Ravioli Maker: This device is still on the market, even though the original modern manufacturer closed. A sheet of pasta is placed on the top metal form, the plastic shaper presses down the pasta to shape the pockets, filling is placed into the pockets, and a top pasta sheet is placed on the form and pressed over by a rolling pin.

Table Top Hand Cranked Pasta Machine: These are the most well known pasta making machines. Some even have electric motors that take over the hand cranking. Various attachments for most shapes of pasta and for ravioli making are available.

Follow to my Hand-Made Fresh Pasta Recipe and Instructions

Last, and most certainly not the least, is the only device actually needed for making hand made fresh pasta. My inherited Rolling Pin, with a metal rod in the middle with wooden handles, is at least fifty years old and still rolling out the dough. Most pasta rolling pins are solid and do not have stationary handles. My grand mother had a rolling pin that was about three feet long. The wooden cutting board that she used with her rolling pin was about as large as her kitchen table.

My rolling pins are my favorite and mostly used tools for making fresh pasta. There's no set up, and no lugging in. Just wash it off and put it away.

PS: The passion for making home made fresh pasta is not included with any of these devices. You must learn to provide your own.

That's where all of the magic of growing up in an Italian Kitchen comes from.