MAISON DE KENNEDY

Plain Fettuccine, From Scratch

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ (5/5) Tested by Cass — 1 hr · Serves 2 generously

Yolk-rich egg dough, rolled thin and cut into ribbons. The ratio is worth memorising once so you never need a recipe again: 100 g flour to 1 whole egg is the lean classic; for fettuccine, where you want golden colour and silky tenderness, go richer at 100 g flour to 1 whole egg plus 1 extra yolk. Yolks bring colour, fat and tenderness; whites bring structure. More yolk, more luxurious ribbon.

Ingredients

• 200 g 00 Pasta Flour
• 2 whole Eggs — large
• 2 Egg Yolks — extra
• ½ tsp Fine Salt
• 1 tsp Olive Oil — optional, Italians argue
• Semolina or extra Flour — for dusting

Method

1. Build the well: Tip the flour onto a clean bench and make a wide crater with your fist. Not too narrow — the eggs need room to swirl.
2. Eggs in: Crack the whole eggs and yolks into the well, add salt and the oil if using.
3. Whisk in place: With a fork, beat the eggs in the centre, slowly pulling flour in from the inner walls. Keep the outer wall intact so nothing escapes across the bench. Once it looks like wet porridge, switch to your hand.
4. Bring it together: Scoop and fold flour over the wet mass until you have a shaggy, slightly sticky ball. You may not use all the flour — that's fine. It should feel like Play-Doh left out a while, not like bread dough.
5. Knead 8–10 minutes: Heel of the hand, push away, fold back, quarter turn, repeat. Real kneading — get a sweat going. Done when it's smooth, springy, and bounces back slowly when pressed. Resist adding more flour; a slightly tacky dough hydrates during the rest.
6. Rest 30 minutes minimum, wrapped tight or under an upturned bowl. The gluten relaxes and the dough goes from stiff to silky. Not optional — skip it and it'll fight you at the roller.
7. Quarter the dough and work one piece at a time, keeping the rest wrapped so it doesn't dry out.
8. Flatten and pre-fold: On the widest roller setting, pass through, fold in thirds like a letter, rotate 90°, pass again. Repeat 4–5 times. This is the second knead — it builds smooth gluten sheets. The dough should come out glossy.
9. Step down the settings: One pass per setting, dropping one number at a time. Don't skip numbers. For fettuccine, stop at setting 5 or 6 on most rollers — roughly 1 mm, thin enough to see your hand through as a shadow.
10. Rest the sheets 3–5 minutes on a lightly semolina-dusted bench or tea towel. A slightly drier surface cuts cleaner and won't stick together.
11. Cut by hand: Dust each sheet generously with semolina, fold loosely into thirds like a flat business letter, and slice 6–8 mm ribbons with a sharp knife. Fettuccine is wider than tagliatelle — about as wide as a pencil. Or use the fettuccine roller attachment and catch the ribbons as they come.
12. Unfurl gently: Lift the ribbons, shake to separate, toss in more semolina. Nest into loose mounds on a tray, or hang over a drying rack or chair back covered with a clean tea towel.
13. Hold or freeze: Best within an hour. Otherwise freeze the nests on a tray, bag once solid, keep up to a month. Cook straight from frozen — adds about 30 seconds.
14. Big pot, big salt: 4 litres of water, 2 heaped tablespoons of salt. Fresh pasta needs aggressive salt because it cooks too fast to absorb seasoning.
15. Cook 60–90 seconds from when it returns to the boil. Taste at 60 — slight chew, no raw flour taste.
16. Save a mugful of pasta water before draining. Always.
17. Finish in the sauce: Tongs it straight in, add a splash of pasta water to bring it together and gloss it up. Sauce it immediately — fresh pasta dries glue-stuck within two minutes.

Notes

• The window test. When the dough is kneaded enough, pinch off a piece and stretch gently — it should thin to translucent in a small patch before tearing. If it tears immediately, knead another two minutes.
• The simplest sauce — cacio e burro. Don't overthink it the first time. Melt 4 tbsp butter in a wide pan, add a ladle of pasta water and swirl until creamy. Tongs the fettuccine in off the heat and toss with a generous handful of grated parmigiano-reggiano. More pasta water if it tightens. Black pepper, eat immediately. The pasta is the star — let it be.

The tells that ruin it

• Too much flour while kneading — tough, brittle pasta that won't laminate sauce.
• Skipping the rest — the dough snaps back at the roller and the ribbons tear.
• Rolling too thin (setting 7 on a 9-setting roller) — ribbons collapse to mush in 30 seconds.
• Crowded water — ribbons stick together in clumps.
• Under-salted water — no flavour, and no way to recover it later.
• Draining and walking away — it dries glue-stuck in two minutes.

Variations

• Semolina bite — swap 20 g of the 00 for semolina. More tooth, more nuttiness.
• Pasta gialla — 200 g flour and 8 yolks. Outrageously rich, golden, silky. Save the whites for meringues.
• Spinach pasta — replace one whole egg with 60 g cooked, squeezed-dry, finely puréed spinach. Same texture, emerald green.
• Black pepper pasta — 1 tbsp freshly cracked pepper into the flour before you build the well. Brilliant for cacio e pepe.

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