Cookbook:Pasta Maker

| Kitchen Tools

A pasta maker or pasta machine is a medium-sized kitchen tool designed to simplify the process of rolling and cutting egg noodles, or other kinds of dough to make fresh pasta such as ravioli, lasagne, fettuccine, and tagliatelle.

The machine is used to roll pasta dough into a progressively thinner sheet with each pass through the machine. When the desired thickness is reached, the sheet can be used as it is to make ravioli. Some machines have inbuilt cutters where the sheet can be passed through a cutter and separated into strips of the appropriate width.

Unlike an extrusion type pasta maker, the manual type has a crank attached or in most cases, slots for a crank on the side. The crank turns a series of rollers, some interlocking to cut, and others just to flatten. An adjuster wheel on one side controls the distance between the flat roller wheels. There are typically two sets of cutting wheels, each with its own slot for the crank. One set is very finely spaced for cutting spaghetti, the other is spaced at about ¼" (5 mm) for fettuccine.