I was making pasta for Lasagna today and thought this post might interest others. If you remove all of the cover guards from the machine, cleaning will become a breeze.
In the past I have had a miserable time rolling out and cutting pasta in my hand operated machine. The pasta was sticky and made cleanup a chore.
3 suggestions
- This is the most important - mix your pasta dough dry. It should never be sticky in the least.
- Sprinkle sheets (front and back), and also sprinkle flour on cut pasta to keep from sticking.
- I disassembled my machine and removed all unnecessary shields. This made cleanup much easier.
When pasta is made properly, cleaning the machine is very simple and generally requires only a light brushing to remove flour dust.
Here is an inexpensive pasta rack that works super and folds up very compact.
My rack in action.
good stuff
i didnt know those could be removed. i usually mix a piece of dough with just water and flour to run through a few times to pick up the loose bits and scraps.. that's how i cleaned it.. then i threw that bit away.
i have the ravioli attachment but looks like however you did those worked better.
j
James these are shaped slightly different from ravioli and are called agnolotti. HERE is a nice video for shaping pasta that may interest you. The link above will take you straight to the agnolotti section.
I have a mold for ravioli, but I find making them by hand is fairly easy and enjoyable. Allie, aka GrowingStella taught me that making the pasta sheets very thin was best. I used her formula and instructions and made the best ravioli ever.
BTW - her Hokkaido Milk Bread is outrageous.
Dan, interesting post , as usual. I make pasta quite often, and usually tend towards very dry, so I don't have any real issues with clean up. While the dryer you posted to looks nice, I stole an idea from another poster - oven racks propped up on cereal boxes , gives me one less thing to store.
Barry, have you thought about a small diameter wood dowel to move the cut pasta? You could cut is a bit shorter than the shelf depth so that it would fit between holes n the wire grill, and use it to move the pasta to the oven shelf. I love the way the supplied stick (pasta wand) makes transfer so easy and efficient.
I definitely get the storage concern. Room is precious. But for those interested, this tool folds up super compact. It is smaller than a rolling pin.