A use for whole wheat flour.

As mentioned before, my husband and I inherited (about 10lbs) various whole wheat flours from a friend who joined our areas first grain CSA. So when my husband suggested that we have lasagne for dinner last night I quickly volunteered to make the pasta sheets. I learnt a couple of things about the CSA's flour from my Pizza dough making a few nights ago. The flour's texture is both soft and bristly from the finely milled endosperm and the tough bran casing. I suspected these qualities could work to my advantage and make a porous noodle that would grab the sauce. Also, as noted the Pizza dough did not rise so well and pasta dough doesn't need any rising, just a short resting time. We used the fresh sheets to make a Sugar Pie Squash lasagne with ricotta and basil.

And what to do with my excess pasta dough? Makes more sheets and turn them into noodles. I discovered early on that my pasta machine did not do a very good job at cutting noodles into fine ribbons so we problem solved this by simply folding the sheets and cutting them roughly to form uneven and roughly shaped noodles. Thus next day's lunch was Tagliatelle* with a tomato garlic

sauce.

* a rustic porous noodle made with whole grain flours in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Mine resembled torn rags.


Mum and daughter making fresh pasta