Fresh Egg Pasta Recipe: Tonnarelli the Way We Make Them in Rome

Fresh homemade pasta is simpler than people expect: ten minutes to knead, ten to rest, a quarter of an hour to roll the sheet and cut it. In our kitchen at Piazza Margana 22 it is the dough every pasta class starts from, and we keep the rule per person so there is nothing to convert: 100 g of flour, half re-milled durum wheat semolina and half 00 flour, one egg yolk, 30 g of water, a circle of extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt. Nothing else.

This is not the whole-egg sheet of Emilia: it is a firmer, yellower dough, made for the chitarra, that gives square-sectioned tonnarelli with the rough surface the Roman sauces need. Below is the method as we do it in class, from the flour volcano to the nests, with the tools, the mistakes we correct every week and how to store it.

For four people you need 400 g of flour, 4 yolks, 120 g of water, a circle of oil and a pinch of salt.

• 200 g of re-milled durum wheat semolina, 50 g per person
• 200 g of 00 flour, 50 g per person
• 4 egg yolks, one per person: set the whites aside
• 120 g of water, 30 g per person, at room temperature
• a circle of extra virgin olive oil
• a pinch of fine salt
• semolina for dusting the board and the sheets

The rule holds at any number: six people, 300 g of semolina, 300 g of 00, six yolks and 180 g of water. The water is weighed, not poured by eye: it is what sets the consistency, and 30 g per person gives a firm dough that lets itself be rolled.

The yolk brings fat, colour and flavour; the white brings water and proteins that toughen the pasta in the pot. With yolks only and weighed water the sheet comes out yellow, elastic and thin without turning rubbery, and the dough is the same from one day to the next: eggs vary in weight, 30 g of water does not.

Re-milled durum wheat semolina is coarser and higher in protein than 00: on its own it gives a firm pasta that is hard work to roll, while 00 on its own gives a smooth but tender sheet. Half and half you get the best of both: a sheet that rolls and a strand that stays firm in the pot, with a rough surface the sauce can grip. For tonnarelli, which have to carry a cacio e pepe made of cheese and starch and nothing else, that roughness is everything. The circle of oil makes the dough more pliable under the pin; the salt, a pinch, is barely there.

You need four things. A rolling pin, to flatten the dough by hand and give it elasticity by folding; a pasta machine, to achieve an even thickness; the pasta guitar, the chitarra, the steel-strung frame that came from Abruzzo and cuts perfect strands of pasta, square in section; and ravioli cutters or pastry cutters, to seal and shape your filled pasta.

The surface matters: a wooden board, with its grain, helps the kneading more than a smooth top. Without a chitarra you roll up the semolina-dusted sheet and cut it with a knife at 2 mm: slower, less even, and still tonnarelli.

Mix the two flours and pour them onto the board in the shape of a volcano, with a wide crater in the middle. Into the crater go the yolks, then the water, the pinch of salt and a circle of oil. Beat the liquid with a fork and start drawing the flour in from the inner wall, a little at a time, as we did during the lesson: first a batter, then a mass that pulls away from the fork.

When you can tell the dough is taking shape, switch to your hands: gather what is left on the board with the scraper and knead by pushing with the palm of your hand, to warm it, folding and turning a quarter turn. In a few minutes it turns smooth and compact. If it cracks, wet your hands; if it sticks, keep kneading without adding flour, which would stiffen the sheet.

Shape it into a ball, wrap it in cling film and let it rest ten minutes. The gluten you have just built relaxes and the sheet stops springing back under the pin. Go have a glass of wine, or a bottle if there are enough of you.

Then roll: pin on the ball, and every so often fold it in half and keep rolling. It is that fold, repeated, that gives the sheet its elasticity. Dust with semolina when it sticks. When the sheet is elastic and even, pass it through the pasta machine starting from the widest setting, 0, and going down one step at a time to 3: that is the tonnarelli thickness, where the strand comes out as thick as it is wide. Any thinner and the chitarra gives you flat ribbons that fall apart in the pan.

Before cutting, set aside a small part of the sheet and keep it covered: that is the ravioli sheet, rolled thinner and sealed with the cutter. The rest goes on the chitarra: sheet dusted with semolina, laid over the strings, rolling pin across it with steady pressure. The tonnarelli drop onto the sloping board underneath, square; a strum across the strings frees the ones that cling.

Open them at once, dust them with semolina and gather them into loose nests on a tray: left in a heap without semolina they weld into a block within five minutes. From the same sheet, rolled up and knife-cut, come tagliatelle and tagliolini; from the small piece rolled thin, ravioli and lasagne.

Extra flour is the first. Someone feels the dough sticking and starts dusting, and in a few minutes they have worked in 50 g too many: a pasta that cracks, rolls stiff and boils into something closer to a biscuit. Sticky at the start is normal and kneading with the palm fixes it.

The second is water by eye: without a scale the dough comes out dry one day and slack the next. The third is dough left uncovered or in a draught: it forms a skin in ten minutes and the skin ends up in the sheet as streaks. The fourth is the pasta machine pushed past 3: a sheet that is too thin makes lovely tagliolini and useless tonnarelli. The fifth is strands left in a heap without semolina: the block goes into the pot as one lump.

The raw ball keeps in the fridge, wrapped in film, for a day, two at most; beyond that it dries and the surface darkens. The better route is freezing the raw pasta already cut: nests or ravioli well spaced on a tray, a couple of hours in the freezer until hard, then into freezer bags. They go straight from frozen into boiling water, with an extra minute.

Freshly cut pasta should be cooked the same day: two to three minutes in salted boiling water, 4 litres and 40 g of coarse salt for four. It floats after a minute and is done sixty to ninety seconds later. Before draining keep a mug of the cloudy water: it is starch, and it is what makes a cacio e pepe or a carbonara cling instead of slide.

In our kitchen at Piazza Margana 22, in the centre of Rome, a short walk from Piazza Venezia. This dough is where every pasta class begins. In the Carbonara class the tonnarelli you cut on the chitarra are the pasta for the three Roman sauces, carbonara, cacio e pepe and amatriciana. In the fresh pasta and tiramisu class the same sheet becomes tonnarelli and ravioli before dessert. In the spritz and spaghetti class it is cut on the chitarra as spaghetti, and in the market tour and cooking class you knead it with what you bought that morning. Each has a private version for a group that wants the kitchen to itself. Shared classes are taught in English; for Italian or Spanish, book a private session. The full list is on the cooking classes page.