My favorite holiday tradition is having homemade spaghetti for Christmas dinner. My grandma Fil used to make spaghetti every year when we were growing up for my family and my aunts, uncles and cousins, and now my mom and sisters and I make it for our Christmas dinner, which is usually around 40 people. It takes a long time to make homemade spaghetti for that many people, but it's also a special treat that everyone looks forward to once a year. I can't even imagine how many days and hours it took my grandma to make all of that spaghetti, while using a hand-crank pasta maker attached to her table. My mom now uses the
KitchenAid® 3-Piece Pasta Roller Attachment Set (or a combo of both types of pasta makers, depending on which size spaghetti she wants to make). The KitchenAid makes the long process go a a lot faster! This set comes with a roller, fettuccine cutter, and spaghetti cutter. There is also another
2-Piece Pasta Cutter Set that has a capellini cutter (angel hair pasta) and lasagnette cutter (thick fettuccine or egg noodles). This year we used 2 mixers which helped even more, so one person could
roll the dough into sheets and the other person could cut the sheets of dough at the same time. My mom likes to use a Trenette cutter attached to her hand-crank pasta machine, which makes a width in between spaghetti and fettuccine, so some years we use that instead of the KitchenAid ones.
Since I have only made spaghetti with my mom at Christmastime, I always forget all the steps. My husband and I received the pasta attachment set a few months ago as a wedding gift, and I am posting this while it is fresh in my mind so I remember everything and can make pasta on my own for us sometimes. Making one recipe will be a lot easier than the amount we usually make for Christmas! Below is my grandma's recipe, and some notes on how we altered it to use the KitchenAid attachments.
Edit on 12/20/2020: I finally used our KitchenAid attachments for the first time today! Below are some notes and photos on how my dough and spaghetti turned out - this was the first time I made my own dough and made everything completely on my own. Instead of using a drying rack, I froze the spaghetti in "nests" to use in a few days for Christmas dinner. I started my dough at 10:30 am and finished everything up at 2:30pm! It is definitely a labor of love, but so worth it in the end. I hope my little family enjoys the homemade spaghetti as much as I always have.
Update 12/17/2023: We just made 6 recipes of spaghetti for our Christmas dinner (for 44 people this year) and there are a few changes this year to the recipe below. At the suggestion of my Aunt Barbara, my mom now weighs her ingredients instead of measuring them like she used to. She also used organic brown eggs this year. The combination of these two changes made her dough come out the best and easiest to work with that I think it has ever come out! In the past, it has always been a bit of a guessing game on how much water to add depending on the size of the eggs, and the dough would either come out too dry or too wet. This year it was perfect! I think we also figured out the pasta-making dream team - two people working the KitchenAid mixers with the pasta roller attachments on, my mom cutting the pasta with her hand-crank pasta maker, and three people separating the spaghetti on the drying racks. We usually split this task into two or three pasta-making days, but today with six people and dough that was easy to work with, we did it all in just a few hours!
My mom's notes on weighing the ingredients:
100 grams dry ingredients to 60 grams wet ingredients
For each recipe she used:
600 grams flour (Anna "00" Flour)
1 Tablespoon salt
360 grams organic brown eggs (about 6 or 7) + water (maybe 1/8 cup of water or so but not more than that, to add to the eggs to get to 360 grams)
Add all ingredients to a KitchenAid mixer bowl and mix until the dough comes together. Knead the dough and shape into a ball, then cover with plastic wrap for at least 30 minutes. Once ready, cut dough into small sections to roll out. Keep the rest of the dough covered so it does not dry out. Roll dough using the KitchenAid mixer attachment, several times on setting 1 (folding and flouring the dough between each pass through the machine), and then once each on settings 2-4, then twice on setting 5. Cut the long sheet of pasta to your desired length (12" or so), then run it through your pasta cutter of choice (spaghetti, trenette, fettuccine, linguine, etc.). Dry the spaghetti on a rack, separating the pieces so they don't stick together, or make into "nests" and flash freeze on a cookie sheet, then store in a container in the freezer.
Mom’s Homemade Spaghetti Dough
~ Filomena Marino
Capobianco
5 cups flour
1 Tablespoon salt
6 extra large eggs (depending on the size eggs)
¼ cup water
Place flour on table; make well; add ingredients; mix;
knead until smooth (from 5 to 10 minutes).
Put dough under bowl to rest for ½ hour or more. Work with machine until you have smooth
strips. Cut and hang on wooden poles
over paper towels to dry. Remove from
poles when dry but keep on paper towels – slide paper towels off pole and place
in box.
Can be frozen. If
frozen, do not allow to defrost before cooking.
To cook, slide off paper towels into boiling water.
Freezing Fresh Pasta Notes:
Line a cookie sheet with plastic wrap or parchment paper. Use a shaker with rice flour to flour the plastic wrap or parchment paper that is on the cookie sheet, and lay pasta on that. Do not flour the nests so they don't stick together and do not put any flour on top of the nests - too much flour will make the pasta gummy once it boils but the rice flour doesn't do that.
Twirl each handful of pasta that comes out of the pasta cutter into a little nest. Once the cookie sheet is full of nests, put another piece of plastic wrap on top and flash freeze it.
Once they are frozen, use a spatula to pick them up and put them in a container and keep them in the freezer until you're ready to use them.
Do not defrost them when you’re ready to cook, just put them right in the boiling water.
KitchenAid Attachment Notes:
Dough can be mixed in a KitchenAid mixer instead of by hand.
Knead dough on floured counter-top, then let dough rest under plastic wrap and/or a
glass bowl for an hour.
Cut off a portion of the dough ball (about 3/4" thick), flatten it a bit and put flour on each side.
Keep unused dough covered throughout
spaghetti-making process so it does not dry out.
Attach the roller to the KitchenAid mixer power hub. Turn the mixer on to speed 2 or 4, and then run flattened dough through KitchenAid roller attachment on setting 1.
Fold dough in half (and press down so it sticks), putting a bit of flour on each side, and run through again.
Fold sides of dough over (and press down so it sticks), putting a bit of flour on each side, and run through again.
Repeat folding and flouring a few more times, until dough is smooth.
Fold dough in half once more, run through on setting 1, and then run through on each number setting once or twice (we did it once) until setting 5, or until your desired thickness. Run the dough through twice on the last setting you want to use. The piece of dough will become very long!
Cut dough into equal size sheets. We cut ours about 12" long.
Let sheets of dough hang on pasta rack to dry for a bit if they are too wet before
running through spaghetti cutter attachment, or until all dough has been made
into sheets (so you don't have to keep switching attachments). Just make sure the sheets do not get too dry, or they will crack when you try to cut them!
Put a bit of flour on each side of dough sheets before running through spaghetti cutter attachment. This will help the spaghetti not get stuck in the cutter, and also help it not stick together when it is drying.
Switch to the spaghetti attachment, and run sheets of dough through, catching the pieces as they come out. Save the scraps that fall. They may be too short to hang on the pasta rack, but they can still be cooked.
Hang spaghetti to dry on rack (until fully dry - overnight is best). Space the spaghetti out a bit so they are not touching or they might stick together.
Once the pasta is completely dry, line a clean box with dish towels and carefully place dried pasta in layers between towels.
Cook fresh pasta in salted boiling water for a few minutes or until done to your liking. Remember that fresh pasta cooks much quicker than boxed pasta, so check it often so it does not overcook!
Pictures from Christmas Day:
Pasta Rack:
Years ago, my dad made my mom this homemade pasta rack. We usually make 2 recipes at a time, but this will fit about 4 recipes of spaghetti - it is huge! It is also a great improvement over the old method of hanging the pasta to dry on wooden poles! You can find smaller pasta racks online, but you cannot find anything like this. It is a work of art. I hope my dad and husband will make one for me one day.
2017 Note: Last year my dad made my mom 8 extra poles for Christmas, so this rack now holds even more pasta! We made 5 recipes of spaghetti in one day and there was still plenty of room for more.
