Just in case you thought we had quit our pasta making adventures, think again! For Christmas we got an extruder to attach to KitcheAid mixer, which means we can make a whole new set of pasta shapes. If you’re unfamiliar with extruded pasta, it’s a method where you use the stand mixer’s engine to force pasta dough through a die cut with shapes, producing strands of pasta that you then cut into individual pieces. It’s an interesting process, and a little easier than hand-shaped pastas because your extruder is doing most of the work. The first new shape we decided to try out was bucatini, which is a lot like thick spaghetti that’s hollow in the middle. Once we made and dried it, we then whipped up a simple sauce to accompany it – so here’s our process, from start to finish.
To make this, you’ll need:
- Semolina flour
- 1 1/2 pounds of cherry tomatoes
- Garlic
- Olive oil
- Dried oregano
- Red pepper flakes
- Capers
- Basil
For all extruded pastas, you’ll be making a simple semolina dough: measure out 500 grams of semolina flour and 175 grams of warm water (we have a cheap food scale we set to metric measurements for this). Place the semolina flour on a work surface in a mound, then make a well in the middle that’s deep but doesn’t go all the way through to the work surface. Pour in some of the water and work it into the flour with a fork, stirring in a circular motion until it’s incorporated, then gradually add in the rest of the water, stirring and incorporating and making sure the water doesn’t flood out of the flour. Once all the water has been added in, use your hands to knead this mixture until you have a dough that comes together – it doesn’t have to be smooth (in fact it’ll likely be a little bit crumbly) but it should hold when you squeeze it together.
Next, set up your extruder on your stand mixer and attach the bucatini die, and also line two sheet pans with parchment paper scattered with extra semolina. Place your mixer on its highest speed, then pull off chunks of semolina dough that are around the size of ping pong balls and drop them into the extruder. Soon the dough should start coming out in a bucatini shape, like so:
Use the cutter on the very bottom of the extruder to slice off the bucatini when they’re about 9 inches long. Fold strands of cut bucatini gently into a horseshoe shape and place on your sheet pans to dry. Then once most of your ball of dough has been extruded, place a second ball into the extruder and repeat this process until all your dough has been shaped. Let the bucatini air dry for 3 hours.
Once you’re ready to cook the pasta up, take your tomatoes and cut them all in half, then place in a casserole dish and mix with 1/4 cup of olive oil, a sprinkling of red peppers flakes and dried oregano, and some salt and pepper. Thinly slice 4 garlic cloves and add those in as well, then roast the tomatoes at 350°F for 20 minutes, stir everything around, and place back in the oven for another 20 minutes.
Now you can boil your pasta in heavily salted water, and let it cook for 3 to 5 minutes. While the pasta is in the pot, scoop out 1/2 cup of the cooking water and place into a large skillet along with the tomatoes and 3 tablespoons of capers. Warm all this over low heat.
When the pasta is ready use a spider strainer to take it out of the water and place it in the skillet, along with some basil leaves, and gently stir everything together.
Now you can serve up your bucatini, with extra basil if you prefer.
Bucatini is a really fun shape because the thickness makes it kind of chewy, but it’s also long enough to twirl around your fork (or slurp if you want to). Since this was our first time working with the extruder, there was a little trial and error but we eventually got the hang of it, and we had fun watching the strands of bucatini come out the other end. After working hard on the pasta, it was nice to make a sauce that just consisted of cutting tomatoes, roasting them, and then mixing them with pasta. We have five more dies included with our extruder kit, plus the option to order more, so we’ll definitely share what else we make!