In my last post (here) I wrote that I ordered Andreas Papadakis’s Tipo 00 – The Pasta Cookbook (Allen & Unwin, Australia) from Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City. Papadakis co-owns and is the chef at Tipo 00, a pasta bar in Melbourne, Australia. With Papadakis’s fine dining background and his restaurant’s pasta-centric focus, I looked forward to diving into his new cookbook.
Tipo 00 looks splendid with its handsome teal blue cover, clean layout and especially lovely and instructive photographs by Mark Roper.
Papadakis divides Tipo 00 into eight main chapters: How to Make Pasta; Long Pasta; Pasta, Filled and Shaped; Risotto; Home Classics; Not Pasta; Tipomisu and Other Desserts; and Basics and Other Essentials.
I found something worthwhile in each of these sections. But what really interests me is Papadakis’s master pasta dough recipe.
Many restaurant-based cookbooks offer up a luxe egg yolk-rich dough recipe. Some examples: Rich Table (210 grams all-purpose flour to 12 large egg yolks); Flour + Water (360 grams tipo 00 flour to approximately 18 to 20 yolks); and Missy Robbins’s Pasta (500 grams tipo 00 flour to approximately 24 to 26 yolks).
I appreciate that these recipes document a restaurant’s process. It is interesting to understand a Michelin-star chef’s pasta ratios. But using 24 to 26 egg yolks to make pasta is something home cooks would likely not entertain. So finding a pasta dough recipe from a great chef that offers a more accessible balance of egg and yolk and flour for the home cook feels welcoming.
Papadakis’s introduces Tipo 00’s master pasta dough like this:
“We use a lot of different doughs to make our pasta in the restaurant, but this is a good universal recipe. For home cooks, the main thing to note is the dryness of the dough—I believe that many recipes for making pasta at home produce a dough that is too wet. This might be easier to roll and shape, but it won’t have the right strength. If your pasta dough is too wet, once you put the rolled and cut or shaped pasta in boiling water to cook, it quickly takes on the consistency of a dumpling.”
Papadakis’s dough gains its strength, in part, from a 70:30 ratio of tipo 00 flour to semolina flour. Adding semolina allows the pasta maker to “reduce the amount of egg yolks needed to bind the dough, and so the pasta will be less rich and eggy.” Papadakis warns that this drier dough might prove a challenge for smaller home pasta machines. His restaurant employs an Imperia R220 Manual Pasta Machine to sheet its dough.
I made Tipo 00’s master dough following Papadakis’s recipe to the letter. I usually use my mixer’s paddle/beater attachment to bring my pasta dough together, but I trusted Papadakis’s instructions and employed a dough hook per his recipe. To help ensure proper dough hydration, I typically slowly add egg to flour. But again, I heeded Papadakis’s process and simply added the egg mixture into a flour well that I formed in the mixer’s bowl.
In the end, the recipe worked out great. My dough didn’t look quite as dry as the dough pictured on page 22 of Tipo 00, but this might be because I used a double milled rather than a course semolina flour.
I also followed Papadakis’s rolling and folding instructions. They produced a beautiful pasta sheet that neatly fit the width of my Imperia R220 machine.
Here’s Papadakis’s master pasta dough recipe, which serves 4 to 6, with his rolling and folding instructions. The asides are Papadakis’s.
350 g (12 oz) ‘00’ flour
150 g (5½ oz) durum wheat semolina flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
65 g (2¼ oz) egg yolk (from about 3-4 eggs)
190 g (6¾ oz) whole egg (about 4 eggs)
If using an electric mixer, place both flours and the salt in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Make a well in the centre and add the egg yolk and whole egg. (I find it easier to weigh the egg yolks in a clean bowl first and then the whole eggs to the same bowl up to the total amount of eggs, which is 255 g (9 oz) for this recipe. The total amount of egg is the important part.) Mix on slow speed for 8-10 minutes, until you start seeing large crumbs forming and the dough starts coming together. Transfer the dough to a clean benchtop and knead by hand until it comes together. Don’t expect it to be really smooth, as this is a drier dough—it will come together more and get smoother in the rolling process.
To make the dough by hand, combine both flours and the salt in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the egg yolk and whole egg. Mix with a fork until just combined, then transfer to a clean benchtop and knead by hand for 6-8 minutes until the dough comes together.
If the dough seems too dry and won’t come together, you can spray it a couple of times with your spray bottle of water—just be careful not to overdo it and make the dough too wet, since it will become more hydrated and softer as it rests.
I like to shape the dough into a roughly rectangular block, rather than a ball, as I find it easier to feed through the pasta machine later. Wrap your dough really well in plastic film, making it as airtight as possible (at the restaurant we use a vacuum sealer).
If you are planning to make your pasta straight away, let the dough rest for at least an hour at room temperature—but ideally refrigerate it overnight, then take it out a couple of hours before rolling and cutting to let it come back to room temperature.
To make the rolling more manageable, it’s best to work with a relatively small amount of dough, so divide it in two before you start. (If you are not using all the dough at once, you can refrigerate the rest of it, tightly wrapped, for up to 3 days.)
Rolling and Folding the Dough
Set up the pasta machine on a solid benchtop. Using your hands or a rolling pin, flatten the dough enough that it will go through the widest setting on the pasta machine, then pass it through the rollers two or three times, going down one notch each time.
Bring both sides of the dough to the centre, so they meet in the middle, then fold in half to create four layers of dough.
Roll the dough through the widest setting again, then repeat the folding and rolling process one more time—but this time bring one third of the dough into the centre, laying it over the middle third, then cover with the last third to create three layers.
Flatten the dough again, so that it will go through the widest setting on your machine, then pass it through the rollers, going down one notch at a time; it should be smooth by now and starting to become elastic. Keep going until the pasta sheets are the thickness you need.
I followed Papadakis’s advice: I let the dough rest one hour at room temperature and worked with only half of my dough (storing the remainder in the refrigerator.) I finished rolling my pasta at a setting between 3 and 2 on my R220 machine. I let the sheets dry out for a bit on each side. I then dusted the pasta with some flour and stacked the sheets on a tray that I lightly covered with plastic film and stored in the refrigerator. An hour or so before cooking, I cut the pasta into tagliatelle.
My family really enjoyed the taste and, especially, the texture of Papadakis’s pasta. The noodles had an excellent firm bite and delicious flavor. I will definitely add this pasta dough recipe into my repertoire.
Tipo 00 contains a large number of pasta dishes that I look forward to trying: Squid ink tagliolini with calamari; Asparagus ravioli with parmesan cream; and Cannelloni with smoked eggplant & ricotta. If you are looking for a solid pasta cookbook to add to your collection, check out Andreas Papadakis’s Tipo 00.
