Play Dough Machine for Pressing Pasta
by Daves Homestead in Cooking > Pasta
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Play Dough Machine for Pressing Pasta
I have always wanted to make my own pasta, and its been on my list for a long time, but I really didn't want to mess with hand cutting my own noodles, and I did not want to buy a $50 dollar pasta machine.
However, while researching another project I happened to find a $20 sheet press for polymer clay that looks exactly like a pasta roller. Being the cheapskate I am, I started thinking about even cheaper ways to solve the problem when it hit me. Play Dough is Dough... A play doh fun factory is around 6 dollars, and if it didn't work, my wife could use it in her class (she is a special educator that works with autistic children).
To test I just made a simple pasta dough recipe 2 cups flour, 2 eggs, knead until you have a ball of pasta dough.
I dug through the package to get the dough press and the two sliding bars with different sized holes and shapes.
After some experimentation, I found that the bar with the 4 small squares made the best compromise between shape and ease of use. If I tried to press the dough through the very small holes, the pressure created caused the dough to escape from every available orifice on the machine.
Once I had the noodles made, I simply dumped them in a pot of boiling water and cooked for about 3 minutes.
This works, but unless you want to make stars or some other funky shaped noodle, then I found it much easier just to hand cut the dough into noodles. But I think it was a neat experiment, and as I said in the video, once my boy gets to the age where he likes playing with play dough, we will recreate this experiment to start crossing over into cooking.
However, while researching another project I happened to find a $20 sheet press for polymer clay that looks exactly like a pasta roller. Being the cheapskate I am, I started thinking about even cheaper ways to solve the problem when it hit me. Play Dough is Dough... A play doh fun factory is around 6 dollars, and if it didn't work, my wife could use it in her class (she is a special educator that works with autistic children).
To test I just made a simple pasta dough recipe 2 cups flour, 2 eggs, knead until you have a ball of pasta dough.
I dug through the package to get the dough press and the two sliding bars with different sized holes and shapes.
After some experimentation, I found that the bar with the 4 small squares made the best compromise between shape and ease of use. If I tried to press the dough through the very small holes, the pressure created caused the dough to escape from every available orifice on the machine.
Once I had the noodles made, I simply dumped them in a pot of boiling water and cooked for about 3 minutes.
This works, but unless you want to make stars or some other funky shaped noodle, then I found it much easier just to hand cut the dough into noodles. But I think it was a neat experiment, and as I said in the video, once my boy gets to the age where he likes playing with play dough, we will recreate this experiment to start crossing over into cooking.