SC - Austin, Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (online at U Michigan)

[Thomas Gloning]

twila hoon wrote:
> 
> It has the handle, and the first slot is the smooth rollers to make sheets
> out of with a guage to adjust the thickness, I found some generic
> instructions in the Dummies Italian Cookbook which say to continue feeding
> the dough through that slot until you've thinned it out.  The next slot is
> the one I've tentatively identified as for fettucine, a roller with 'teeth'
> to cut into the dough into strips, the third hole has smaller
> 'teeth/divits' then the fettucine one so maybe spagetti or angel hair??
> The crank operates the rollers by shifting from drive opening to another -
> and all turn smoothly -- I am going to attempt to use it on THursday and
> see what happens -- I've always got dried stuff :).
> I am hoping though that the generic instructions will work -- any other
> suggestions?

In addition to all that's been said (and implied), my experience has
been that the best way to knead pasta dough for use with such a machine
is to use the machine itself. Set your rollers as far apart as they'll
get (within reason) and feed your blob of dough through, cranking to
pull it through. You should end up with a slightly lumpy, oblong,
wrinkled strip. Fold it into as many thicknesses as necessary to feed
its now shortened length through as the width of the new, short strip,
in other words, by rotating the dough 90 degrees. Pass it through again,
folding and rotating each time, like the turns in making puff pastry.
Keep doing this until your dough is satiny smooth and shiny. Let it rest
a few minutes, covered, and you'll be ready to start rolling it into
thin sheets and cutting it to size. 

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com