Homemade Ingredients

Pasta ●
●
6g all purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
● 2 whole eggs
● 2 egg yolks

Preparation
1. Weigh your flour
I used all purpose flour for my pasta but you
can use semolina or “00” flour if you like.
2. Separate egg white and egg yolks
This process is hard with slimy eggs. The best
way is to run the egg between your hands
until the egg white drops through your
fingers. Your egg should be about 60% egg
white and 30% egg yolk.
3. Combine eggs and flour
This can be done in a stand up mixer or can
be done by hand. Once combined it will be
slimy. Move to the bench and fold in flour
until not sticky or slimy anymore.
4. Knead Dough ball
This is a time consuming and hard part of the
Ready in 50 minutes
process but very important. Knead your
Serves 4 people dough by pushing with the palm of your hand
and roating 45° every time you push. Do this
for about ten minutes. You really can't over
Equipment knead it so the more the better. Add flour if
● Stand up Mixer the dough becomes sticky again.
● Scale 5. Rest and roll
● Bench Scraper
Rest the dough ball for 30 minutes. After
● Rolling Pin
resting, cut half the dough ball to roll out.
● Plastic Wrap
Lightly flour your dough and rolling pin to
● Large Knife or Pizza Cutter
prevent sticking. Roll the dough as thin as
● Medium Pot
you can with the rolling pin. Take a pizza
cutter or large knife to cut the dough into ½
inch strips.

6. Boil and Cook
Boil a medium pot of water with a pinch of
salt. Place pasta into boiling water and cook
for about 60 seconds. Taste to make sure
pasta is cooked and removed from water.
Add your favorite pasta sauce and enjoy your
homemade pasta.
Personal Commentary
I have always eaten a lot of pasta and always
wondered really how hard it was to make
homemade pasta. Turns out it's harder than I
thought. When I heard that we had to make
food and change a variable I thought oh this
is my chance to see if I can make pasta. While
the pasta did not come out quite as planned I
learned many lessons along the way.
Measuring you ingredients is very important
in this scenario because there are only three
ingredients. You also need to understand the
dough and understand if you need to add
more flour. Overall I would of course try this
again to see if I could come up with a better
outcome.
My experiment
I decided to find out how the ratio of eggs to
egg whites will affect the taste and texture of
the pasta. Since the only two ingredients in
pasta are eggs and flour, I thought this would
have a pretty dramatic effect on the taste
and texture. My independent variable was
the egg white to egg yolk ratio and my
dependent variable was the taste and
texture.
When designing the experiment I decided to
use two whole eggs and two yolks for every
6 grams of flour. This is the one that I thought
would be the best because it came from a
recipe. I then decided to use one whole egg
and three egg whites in another batch. I
thought this one would have the least
amount of flavor because egg whites are
mostly water. The final batch used 1 whole
egg and 5 egg yolks. This one took way more
eggs because the moisture content in the
yolk is way less than the white.
For measuring my experiment I decided that
a blind taste test of the three different
doughs would bring me accurate and
consistent results. From the results I
gathered that people liked the taste of pasta
1 the most. This was the pasta that was from
the recipe. Pasta 1 and pasta 3 were tied for
best texture. Pasta one was the recipe
proportions and pasta three was 1 egg and 5
egg yolks.
Science: Why This Works
So why did people enjoy the taste of pasta 1
and the texture of both pasta 1 and pasta 3?
This all comes down to what makes up an egg
yolk vs an egg white. With the case of pasta 1
tasting the best, is because there is a balance
between egg yolks and egg whites. The egg
white is approximately 60% of the egg weight
and 87% water and 10% percent protein. The
egg yolk is 30% the total weight of the egg
and 50% water 16% protein and 32% fat. The
more egg yolk gave the pasta more flavor. But
in the case of pasta three it had too much
protein and fat to where it was almost too
rich of a pasta. With pasta two there was only
one egg yolk so there was little fat to add
flavor to the otherwise bland flour and
mostly water egg whites. The texture
becomes a little more scientific. The extra
protein in the egg yolks bonds with the flour
to create more gluten bonds. I saw evidence
of this when I needed the dough out. Dough
three that had 6 egg yolks was much harder
to roll and knead because of the extra bonds
that were created. This would explain why
no one liked the texture of pasta 2. It only
had one egg yolk. This was not enough
protein to bond with the flour to make gluten
bonds. This caused the pasta to be very
mushy.

Sources
https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/01/best-
easy-all-purpose-fresh-pasta-dough-recipe-i
nstructions.html

https://www.joyofbaking.com/eggs.html#:~:t
ext=The%20egg%20consists%20of%20the,
%25%20water%20and%2010%25%20prote
in.&text=The%20yolk%20consists%20of%2
050,%25%20protein%20and%2032%25%20
fat.

http://www.theelevatedkitchen.com/guides/
science-proteins