Fresh egg pasta is the first thing Chef Giampaolo Maffini tests in a kitchen he has been asked to assess. Flour, eggs, a board, two hands. Nothing hides. A cook who can make a proper sfoglia can be taught everything else.
Chef Giampaolo Maffini is a Milan-trained Italian chef with forty years of professional experience across eighteen countries, named TIME Magazine Chef to Watch in 2004 and trained under Gualtiero Marchesi, Italy’s first three-Michelin-star chef. What follows is the method as it is taught in Emilia-Romagna, where egg pasta belongs.
Two ingredients and one ratio
Classic Emilian egg pasta is flour and whole egg. No oil. No water. No salt in the dough. The working ratio is one egg to one hundred grams of flour, which means a large egg of roughly fifty-five to sixty grams.
Use a soft wheat tipo 00 for tenderness. Add a quarter semola rimacinata if you want more bite and a rougher surface for sauce to hold. Egg size varies more than flour does, so keep a little extra flour on the board and adjust by feel rather than by the scale.
Mixing and kneading by hand
Tip the flour onto a wooden board and open a well in the centre. Break the eggs into it. Beat them with a fork, pulling flour in from the inside wall of the well until the mass is too thick for the fork to turn.
Now use your hands. Press the shaggy dough together with a bench scraper, then knead with the heel of one palm. Push forward, fold back, turn a quarter. Ten minutes of steady work. The dough starts rough and ends smooth, firm and slightly tacky. Press a thumb into it. The dent should fill back slowly. If it springs straight back the dough is too dry and wants a few drops of water on your hands.
The rest is not optional
Wrap the ball tightly and leave it at room temperature for thirty minutes. An hour is better. The gluten relaxes and the flour finishes taking up the egg. Dough rolled straight after kneading fights the pin and tears at the edges.
Keep short rests off the fridge. If you need to hold the dough longer than two hours, refrigerate it, then bring it back to room temperature before rolling.
Rolling the sfoglia
A long wooden mattarello gives you control a machine cannot. Flatten the ball, then roll from the centre outward, rotating the sheet a few degrees between passes so it stays round. Work quickly. A drying sheet cracks.
Thickness decides the dish. For tagliatelle, roll until you can read newsprint through the sheet. For tortellini and other filled shapes, go thinner again, because the filling adds body. Dust with semola rather than flour when the sheet needs help releasing, since semola stays granular and does not turn to paste.
Cutting, cooking and sauce
Let the sheet dry on the board for ten minutes so the cut edges hold their shape. Fold it loosely into a flat roll and cut six to seven millimetres wide for tagliatelle. Lift each ribbon, shake out the folds and set it in a loose nest under a cloth.
Fresh egg pasta cooks in ninety seconds to two minutes in water salted hard enough to taste. Drain it early. Finish it in the pan with the sauce and a ladle of the cooking water, off direct heat, moving the pan until the sauce coats each ribbon. Egg pasta wants butter, ragu or a cream of Parmigiano. It does not want a thin tomato sauce, which slides off. There is a fuller explanation of that behaviour in our note on why pasta sauce slides off.
Frequently asked questions
Can I make good egg pasta without a machine?
Yes. A rolling pin and a board are all the equipment Emilian home cooks have used for generations. A machine gives an even sheet faster. A pin gives a slightly rougher surface that holds sauce better.
Which flour should I use?
Soft wheat tipo 00 for a tender sheet. Blend in up to a quarter semola rimacinata for firmer pasta with more texture. All-purpose flour works when tipo 00 is not available, though the sheet will be less silky.
How long will fresh pasta keep?
Cut ribbons hold two days in the fridge in loose nests dusted with semola, or three months frozen on a tray and then bagged. Cook frozen pasta from frozen and add thirty seconds.
Why does my dough crack when I roll it?
Either it rested too little or it is too dry. Rest it longer. On the next batch, hold back a spoonful of flour and let the dough tell you whether it wants it.
Chef Giampaolo Maffini trained under Gualtiero Marchesi in Milan and has spent forty years in professional kitchens across eighteen countries, from Ritz-Carlton and Crown Resorts to Hilton. TIME Magazine named him a Chef to Watch in 2004. He is a member of the Chaine des Rotisseurs. Read the full background on the About Chef Giampaolo Maffini page.
If your brigade needs fresh pasta on the menu and made properly every service, Chef Maffini trains teams on site. See Italian culinary consulting or write to chef@chefmaffini.com.
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