Super easy pasta dish

All the videos I've seen of people showing the dough process has much wetter dough and has them sprinkling flour on the sheets before and during the rolling.  When the dough is that wet and sticky it can gum up the rollers unless you dust with flour.   And then the pasta tends to stick together after you cut it unless you hang it to dry.    

I don't hang it to dry, I go straight from the roller into the boiling water and I don't want the noodles sticking to each other ... and I don't want the noodles dusted with flour to muddy up the water when they go in the pot. 

I've tried it many different ways and it works the best/fastest when the dough is just wet enough go easily thru the rollers and just dry enough to not need any dusting of flour.  Then it rolls and cuts really easily without sticking at all to the machine and the noodles separate easily as they go into the boiling water.  

It's just the method I've settled on after trying it lots of different ways.

You can boil the noodles to whatever texture you prefer.  I roll mine out to the 4th setting on the roller - it seems thin but they plump up in the boiling water.    There's that old bit about tossing noodles to see if they stick to the wall to tell if they are done.   I just pull one noodle out and chew on it. It's all personal taste but I want to feel resistance as my tooth goes thru the noodle - but not rubbery. It's a balancing act and boiled too long makes the noodle feel too soft for my tastes.

Also I should note that I don't rinse the hot noodles or anything to cool them, I just strain them into a mesh basket and then dump them into the skillet and the skillet is hot (but not sizzling - just the residual heat that cast iron retains) so the noodles continue to cook a little while they are absorbing the garlic butter and olive oil etc. 

If I were making ravioli and wanted really silky smooth sheets of very thin pasta then the Semolina is a bit too coarse - it will work but is more likely to tear and just doesn't get as silky.   The Semola rolls out with a silky look to it.   When I'm making thick noodles or spaghetti, I prefer the Semolina - I like the tooth feel of it.   Also you have to let the Semolina rest longer after mixing the liquid (an hour is great - overnight even better). It will still work without resting but if I'm going straight from mixing to rolling, it's much easier with Semola

If you look at the picture of my rolled out sheets compared to your rolled out sheets - see how much more coarse your sheet looks on the surface?  That gives a hearty, tooth feel but you may want to spritz it a couple of times with water and roll it a few more times to get it silkier.  

My picture shows a bag of Caputo Semola flour - but what is in that bag is actually Bob's Red Mill Semolina that I ran thru my grinder on super fine - it seems pretty much identical to the Caputo after grinding fine like that.  

I notice when I use the coarser Semolina, I have to make it wetter than usual and let it sit long enough to absorb it. 

I'm not familiar with pasta alla gricia but I'm going to google it.   

What made me think of this dish in the first place was reading a recipe for spaghetti carbonara.  I read all the comments of how some people add this and add that (peas, mushrooms, onions etc.) and how the traditionalist were so offended.  Saying anything additional was just spoiling something that was already perfect.   So I made it the traditional way a few times --- and while it was delicious, I found that I felt like I had eaten a bucket of ice cream (all that grease and egg yolk).  So I stopped making it.    But I also remembered how well the bacon flavors (yeah, I don't know where to buy pancetta and I always have thick bacon on hand) went with pasta.      

So I just hungry one day and didn't have hardly anything on hand in the kitchen.  But I had bacon and mushrooms and onions and garlic and an egg and some semolina.  I think I tried spinach with it once - and it's good but I think it detracts rather than adds.  It just turned out to be something I really like and it can be made with stuff that I almost always have on hand - so I don't have to make a grocery run.  

Another thing I like about this dish is that it's so quick to prepare when you get a surprise visitor - you can visit in the kitchen while you make it and most people are amazed to see pasta being made from scratch.  It's just perfect as a way to visit with a guest while impressing the heck out of them. 

I just made it again today and I had a rotisserie chicken in the fridge so I added some chunks of roasted chicken just before I dumped the noodles in. Yummy!

When you say it would take forever and a day to knead by hand.   Do you not have an Atlas roller?   I don't knead the dough at all.  I simply press the moist semolina/egg into a lump while it's in the Cuisinart (with the blade removed) and then take it out and press it down on the counter with my hands to flatten it out a little and then run it thru the roller on the widest setting - fold it and run it thru again - fold it and repeat a dozen or so times.  It becomes silky smooth just by running it thru the roller.  No kneading at all. 

That looks delicious.  I've got tons of ginger I need to use up - I'm going to have to try your version now.

BTW ... I do this all the time without resting the dough at all - but I have an Atlas roller.   

I went back and looked at my photo of the cup of flour and egg and it looks closer to 3/4 of a cup than 7/8 cup so I edited to original post to 3/4 cup.  Seems most people who have tried this have found the dough too stiff.  I really just go by how it feels.  I can squeeze the dough in my hands and press it out flat with my hands. It's like playing with Play-Doh if you have kids/grandkids or remember Play-Doh from when you were a kid.   So if your dough is too tough to roll out it means you need more liquid or less flour.   The spray bottle of water makes it easy to spritz a small amount of water to get the dough more workable.