Before we get to the fun of making the pasta, let me point out that it is not easy to find semolina flour. As it is the main ingredient of many dried pastas, I made the mistake of assuming all I needed to do was go to the baking aisle of my favorite grocery store. I was wrong.
Five stores of varying types later, I finally found some at Lassen’s, a health food store. Normally the only things I acquire there are herbs and rye flour. Grocery stores don’t normally stock those, either.
Once home with my precious bag of flour, I set about making the dough. I had the feeling that this would be as simple as it is with all purpose flour. I was wrong. I was very wrong.
It needed an extra egg, extra water and extra oil before it became anything but little pellets that wouldn’t hold together. It was slightly tempting to give up at this point, but I had so much invested in time, money and frustration I couldn’t.
Once the dough had become dough, I turned it out and started to knead it. This was not an easy thing to do, as it kept falling apart. However, I persevered, got it into some semblance of order and began breaking off pieces as instructed. When I read the recipe, I was a little surprised about the word “break.” That’s exactly how it felt when I did it; broken off.
That was easy, but I could tell the next step wasn’t going to be. By now, I knew I was in brand new territory. The recipe was useless from this point forward. I kneaded the first batch until it felt cohesive and then tried running it through the pasta roller. What came out were strange looking, semi-flat pasta bits.
After considering it, I decided it might need to be kneaded with olive oil on my hands rather than flour. After that, I got bigger pieces of flat pasta bits, so I knew I was on the right track.
Ten minutes later, I realized that the dough was too thick, which was making it harder to get a sheet of pasta out. I got out my rolling pin and voila! it looked sort of like a sheet of pasta. After a few more rounds of folding the dough and using the rolling pin, I got my first sheet of semolina pasta.
Having learned with regular flour that cutting the dough works better if the sheet is allowed to dry for a while, I waited a bit before running it through the cutter. I was happy to see that it came out in recognizable strands and that they did not have the same tendency to stick together if not immediately separated as regular flour.
When it came time to actually cook the pasta, I decided to call in the Expert. My husband is much better at getting the pasta out at just the right time. I can only do that if I have instructions about how long it should take, and I already knew the instructions in the booklet were faulty.
Here, as expected, we ran into the last thing the recipe forgot to mention. Semolina pasta, at least this batch of it, does not progress much past al dente. It is possible that the sheets were too thick before cutting. I can try that with my next batch. However, by the time the pasta was at this point, we were ready for it.
It did taste good, so I’m thinking there will be a next time. At least now I know what to expect. I can also add kudos to Iron Chef America, because just to get the dough made, cut and ready to cook took well over an hour.