The last one fed me for three months - so far, that is - about a third of the last bag is still left. It was a high quality 25# bag, and it cost me $9.00.
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I use this flour to make three different kinds of dough that I pretty much subsist on - asian pasta, egg pasta, and pizza dough.
This blog does a pretty good job of advising you about your pasta maker purchase. It's partly based on the highest user-rated pasta makers on Amazon, and the top two brands are Imperia and Atlas. The ratings are extremely high for both - both rate nearly all 5's out of 5. I chose this Atlas, and it cost me $94.00.
Marcato Atlas 150 Wellness
I went with a high-end device. At this stage in my life, I guess I'm looking for lifetime tools, and I couldn't be more pleased with this decision. The dies are precision-made, it's dense and heavy, and the gears are exceedingly smooth.
The pasta maker review blog, above, also says good things about a low-end pasta maker made by Prime Pacific. It's described as being not quite as heavily built, but it only sells for $36.69 on Amazon. Users give it lots of 5's and quite a few 4's.
How about this KitchenAid electric stand mixer extruder? Well, I've never used one, but the reviews are mixed on Amazon, and lots of Kossaks weighed in with both pros and cons in last week's diary. The cost is half again as much, at $145.00 on Amazon. Since I haven't been down that road, there's nothing more that I can really offer, other than "discuss among yourselves!"
Speaking of electric powered pasta makers, I kept that option open when I purchased my Atlas, which can be retrofitted with an electric motor for about $100.00. I very quickly found that this would be unnecessary for my needs - the hand crank suited me just fine, and I don't seem to get the feeling where I wish I had "3 hands". I saved that $100 for another day.
None of these units seem to need much at all in the way of either maintenance or cleaning. You can put a light vegetable oil on the extruding rollers if you wish, or you can dust them with flour first, but even those steps are optional. I don't perform either ritual. I found a bit of a quirk when it came to cleaning - you apparently cannot use water on these! I can't seem to find out why that is, but my thinking is that maybe the roller assembly is made from carbon steel which can be especially prone to rust. It's not really a problem in the least - a 1" hardware store paintbrush will clean it perfectly. A tip - run wax paper through the roller dies and cutters. It will shred the paper, of course, but not only will it help clean the assembly, but it will leave a little kitchen-grade wax behind for clean, welcome lubrication. This works perfectly.
Of course part of our objective here is home economics, so let's see if we can save some pennies. Try searching for your brand of choice through AllofCraigs.com - a site that aggregates all the ads from all the Craigslists nationwide. Worth it, because these devices are easy and inexpensive to ship. Also try auctions, estate sales, garage sales and eBay for these at less than retail. People sometimes don't really know what exactly they have for sale, so the potential for a real bargain is certainly there.
Asian pasta from last week has two ingredients - flour and water. Egg pasta also has two ingredients - flour and eggs. This guy is the best. I can't improve on this Youtube video - especially the part where he shows you how to knead an egg pasta dough:
Approximately 4 cups of high-gluten flour
7-8 large fresh eggs, cracked
salt to taste
Some egg pasta hints and tips:
1 Your number one problem will be a dough that's too wet. So don't make it too wet :-) This video, above, correctly suggests that you'll soon begin getting the moisture right every time.
2 Eggs can be different sizes, of course, so you have to adjust the amount of flour to the amount of egg protein - not the other way around.
3 You want high-gluten flour so that your noodles come out tough, hardy and substantial, which helps prevent your noodles from falling apart or becoming gummy in your dish.
4 If you want them to be more hardy and substantial yet, substitute either corn flour or semolina flour for some of the bread flour, above. These flours have more gluten proteins yet.
5 Let you dough ball rest - for hours, preferably. This step does several things, but most fundamentally, it lets the moisture spread evenly throughout your entire dough ball. Rub it with vegetable oil first to keep it from sticking to its container.
6 The last tip is to knead them in a cross-wise fashion like the video indicates. This creates tough, perpendicular layers which add structural strength to your noodles. Like a kevlar vest :)
Divide your finished, kneaded dough ball into eight equal sections, and put four in each marked baggie. They freeze perfectly and keep for months.
In the morning before you leave home, take some of them out to thaw - one for each person who will be eating that night. They only take 30-40 minutes at room temperature to defrost and become pliable.
Then create your pasta - in my Atlas I have the choice of spaghetti or taglietelle noodles with the standard attachments that came with my model. Looks like the Imperia line, mentioned above, offers a few more options:
Lastly, rack-dry your pasta - ideally for the entire day. You can purchase a pasta drying rack, but I just made my own out of fiberglass window screening stretched onto a wooden frame.
This all came about because of a desire to eat better, cleaner, healthier, more natural food.
This is the second in the series - the first in the series can be found here, and it dealt with using an Italian-made pasta maker to create Asian pot sticker wrappers. This one speaks to creating egg pasta, as well as choosing, maintaining and cleaning a pasta maker, and in the third of the series, I will speak to choosing the right flour, and making pizza dough. Part III will be published on the morning of 03 Mar 2012.
And the cost? So far for the flour, it's looking like it's going to be less than $3 per month.