How To Make Gluten Free Pasta
Home-made pasta is usually made with fresh eggs using four eggs to 2 and a 1/2 cups of standard flour.
Here is an adaptation of the standard pasta recipe which uses eggs, only this one is a totally gluten free pasta which is equally as good as a wheat flour pasta, only more nutritious. This home made egg pasta is very high in protein and is a good protein food for vegetarians, provided you can eat eggs.
Use Free Range Eggs: The first priority is to make sure that the eggs for your gluten free pasta are free range eggs, for the sake of the chickens which produce them for us. Caged chickens have such a miserable life, we should do everything we can to get them out of those cages. NOT buying battery, barn-laid eggs and, instead, buying free range eggs is doing heaps towards letting a chicken have a happy life. It is worth paying that little bit extra for them. And then try to procure organic eggs for your pasta, if they are available.
Recipe for Gluten-Free Pasta
First of all, lightly beat up 4 fresh eggs in a pint-size bowl.Stand aside ready for use.
Into a larger mixing bowl put:
1 cup of rice flour
1 cup of besan flour, or chick pea flour
½ cup of either arrowroot flour or potato flour
1 heaped tablespoonful of soy flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon of olive oil
METHOD:
Stir the flours together, then make a well at the centre of the flours.
Into this well, pour the beaten eggs.
Add the tablespoonful of olive oil into the well.
Use a fork to begin gradually mixing in the eggs and oil into the flours. Then use the hand to mix and knead the ingredients together as it becomes a dough.
Lightly flour a board or working space with 50/50 rice flour and potato flour. Turn the gluten-free dough onto the floured board and knead lightly for between five to ten minutes. The dough should be nice and smooth and pliable, and not sticky.
Cover the kneaded dough with a clean tea towel and leave to sit for half an hour.
Reflour your working board with a little more of your gluten-free flours. Press out the ball of dough lightly with the fingers. Then proceed to roll out your dough with a wooden rolling pin. Keep lifting the sheet of rolled dough and turning it about 45 degrees clockwise every two or three rolls.
If you are making lasagne, then you can use the pasta immediately. If you wish to boil the pasta as in spaghetti, then let the pasta dry for 15 minutes before cutting it or running it through a cutter. You can hang the sheet of pasta over a broom handle and leave it between two chairs to do the drying.
To Boil the Pasta: Cook in the usual way for pasta, making sure that the water is completely boiling before you put the pasta in. Make sure that it simmers once the pasta in. If it boils too hard, then your gluten free pasta may break up. Gluten free home-made pasta is more fragile than the usual shop-bought varieties of pasta.
Store Your Pasta: It is possible to store pasta which has been made with eggs, but it must be dried out completely to do so.
Drying the pasta for storage may take a day or more, depending on the humidity and air temperature. The pasta could be put into a very slow drying oven for several hours if the weather was damp. Dried out properly, egg pasta will keep for up to two months in an air-tight jar which stands in a dry cupboard.
Other Gluten Free Flours: You can experiment using other flours in combination with your four eggs and a tablespoon of olive oil. Any of these flours can be used, but you really need some arrowroot or potato or soy to give the pasta a smooth consistency which will hold together in the cooking. Rice flour, cornmeal flour, fine millet, arrowroot flour, tapioca flour, soy and besan or chickpea flour are all gluten free. Several of these can be combined to make a nutritious and protein-rich pasta.