Vegan Fresh Pasta Recipe

By Victoria Featherston

Making vegan homemade pasta is not much different to making regular pasta, as you will see in this vegan fresh pasta recipe. In fact, it may be even easier because you are using the addition of water instead of eggs. Often, traditional fresh pasta originally did not contain eggs anyways.

There really are only three main ingredients, which as you may have guessed are just: flour, water and salt. Sometimes olive oil is added as an option. As for the flour, much like with regular fresh pasta, you can use either all-purpose flour or semolina flour, or even a mixture of both. Using semolina flour will yield a more chewy pasta with more 'bite.' The pasta will be al dente after cooking, which cannot be achieved with all-purpose flour. It all depends on your preferences. Some people do prefer a more tender cooked pasta than others.

One thing that´s different with vegan fresh pasta is that you should dry out the pasta for half an hour or so before cooking it. This allows it to become more durable and less mushy. If you cooked it immediately after rolling out the dough, it may become a mushy mess in the pot of water. Most people have had much better results with drying out the pasta briefly.

If you don´t have a pasta hanger, that´s completely fine as it´s not necessary anyways. What I like to do is use a few clean clothes hangers to dry my fresh pasta. If you´re really concerned about hygiene, you can put some paper towels between the pasta and hanger. This vegan fresh pasta recipe can easily be halved or doubled to suit your required servings.

Vegan Fresh Pasta Recipe

Ingredients
1 cup semolina flour
dash of salt
1/2 cup water

Directions
Combine the ingredients with either a stand mixer, food processor or by hand. If doing it by hand, make a well with the flour and pour some water into the center of it, being careful not to spill it past the 'walls' of the well. Add the salt. Using a fork, combine the flour and water, gradually moving the flour towards the center in circular motions. Keep adding water and combining until there´s no water left.

Once the ingredients form into a dough, work it with your hands. Knead the dough for about 4-5 minutes on a floured surface. The end result should be a sticky dough, but neither wet nor dry. Divide the dough into balls so that they´re no bigger than your fist.

Now, either use a pasta machine to roll and shape a ball of dough, or use a rolling pin to do it by hand if you don´t have a machine. If rolling by hand, do it on a floured surface until dough reaches a thickness of 1/16' or as thin as you can get it. Using a knife, cut the pasta into desired shapes. Repeat with the remaining balls of dough.

After you´re done rolling and shaping all of the dough, hang it dry somewhere for about half an hour for best results. To cook the pasta, throw it in a pot of salted boiling water for about 2 minutes or until they float. Serve with your favourite sauce.

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