A Personal Essay by Izzy Giacoppo

Swarming my social media feed are videos featuring an egg being swirled into a surrounding flour crater and turning into a two ingredient single serving of pasta. Giving this a try was tempting, so I finally took a shot at it, wondering if the two ingredient appeal would equate to simplicity. By testing this out, I’ll give you the reality of making pasta from scratch, and what I would do differently next time. 

The videos don’t lie. All you need is an egg and some flour. For one serving, I used ½ cup with one egg. I had flour on a wooden cutting board and made a well. Since I tend to sloppily crack eggs, I cracked it into the measuring cup so I could check for eggshells, then put it into the well. With a fork, I slowly mixed the egg into the flour. I scraped small edges of the flour well into the egg. Once my egg was mostly mixed in (enough to not spill from the well), I scraped flour from the outside into the center using a metal spatula as an alternative to a pasta scraper. After repeatedly scraping the mixture into the center and chopping, the dough became dry and crumbly, but evenly mixed, so it was time to knead.

On the flour-dusted cutting board, I gently gathered the mixture together and began folding it in on itself and pushing it forward. The first minute was challenging because there were many flaky pieces I needed to fold in, but the dough took form in no time. I spent about 10 minutes kneading. For the first five, the dough was tough and sticky with a cracked, bumpy texture. In the next half, the texture smoothed out and had an even color. To ensure it was ready, I poked the dough to see if it would bounce back, meaning it was good to go. A shallow indent still remained, but that was acceptable. 

After kneading, I formed a ball with the dough and wrapped it securely in plastic wrap. The covered dough had to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes to an hour, so l waited for 50 minutes.

Tagliatelle, a flat noodle, is the most common pasta shape I’ve seen in viral videos. I rolled out the ball of dough nice and flat and sprinkled it with flour so the dough wouldn’t stick to itself. I folded a rectangle and continued until it was folded all the way to the end. With a sharp knife, I cut across about one centimeter wide for each piece. 

Boiling pasta dough takes one to five minutes and my noodles floated to the top within two minutes to tell me they were ready. They were tender and I could tell they were al dente from the slightly dark line in the middle. I kept the pasta toppings simple with olive oil, a little sea salt, and some black pepper so I could focus on the quality of the pasta. It tasted much fresher than dried pasta and was the most perfectly al dente pasta I had ever made.

Though I was skeptical, the process was actually as easy as the videos claimed. My biggest mistake was making my well too shallow, so the whites leaked out, but it was easy to mix them back in. I also had to use a glass bottle in place of a rolling pin, so I didn’t have as much control in flattening the dough. My noodles turned out a little thicker than I would have liked, but I still ended up with an ideal serving size and a proper al dente that I look forward to making again soon.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup of flour
• 1 egg
• Toppings (optional): olive oil, sea salt, black pepper