Pasta Making Toy

I love my Kitchenaid mixer and would be lost without it.  I use it to mix cake and cookies batters, to make royal icing, bread dough.  I use it so much I have two work bowls so I can do multiple things without having to take a break to wash the bowl! I have two attachments that I find I'm using more and more and they both involve pasta.  The pasta roller & cutter attachment rolls and cuts the dough for sheet pasta, fettucini, etc. I also have the pasta press attachment. This gadget is an extruder and produces "tube-style" pasta, such as spaghetti and rigatoni.

Last weekend I made a batch of rigatoni. The dough was initially mixed up in the Kitchenaid, then kneaded with the dough hook for a few minutes. I attached the extruder, put in walnut-sized pieces of dough and let the machine do the rest. It took me about half an hour to make this batch of rigatoni, easily done while watching a preseason football game that my team was losing (regular season please get here soon!)

Using fresh ingredients, some bacon, cream and basil,  I made a very simple pasta sauce and tossed the cooked rigatoni in it. Like most freshly-made foods, fresh pasta is so much superior to the boxed pasta. It's worth the extra effort!

A little kneading action!

The extruder attaches to the mixer.  Small balls of pasta dough are put in top and the machine does the rest!

The pasta is cut to the desired length with the wire attachment.

Fresh pasta ready to be cooked! Yum!