3 cups semolina flour
2 teaspoons salt
4 eggs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Process flour and salt one second. Add eggs and oil and process 30 seconds, or until fully blended. Turn out and knead with a rolling pin for three minutes. Roll flat, fold, repeat. If dough is too sticy, add a little all purpose flour. Cover and let rest two hours in refrigerator.
Hand mix flour and salt and mound on a cutting board. Make a well in the top of the mound and add the egg and oil into that well. With a fork, break one egg yolk and begin mixing, letting the egg pick up particles of flour. Slowly mix in the other eggs and the rest of the flour. You may need to use your fingers after a while. Knead for five or ten minutes and cover and let rest two hours in the refrigerator.
If you've a pasta machine, follow the directions that came with it. Otherwise, you most roll out and cut your pasta by hand. Begin with a small piece of the dough and cover the remainder with a damp tea towel. Roll out your small piece very flat, turn, and roll out again. Keep rolling and turning. As it gets thinner, try pressing the egdes of the dough into the board you're working on to stretch the sheets of pasta. The final sheet should be so thin that you can make out your fingers through it.
Lightly flour the surface and carefully roll into a narrow cylinder. With your sharpest knife, thinly slice this roll. Then unroll each long noodle and hang over something to dry slightly.
For each pound of pasta bring a gallon of water to a vigorous boil with a tablespoon of salt. Add the pasta a few noodles at a time. Cook until just done. For vermicelli or cappa d'angelo this might be a matter of seconds; for manicotti or lasagne sheets, several minutes. The only accurate test of doneness is to taste.
Pasta can been precooked, minutes, hours or even days ahead. Drain the cooked noodles and shock them in cold water, to stop the cooking pocess. When pasta is cool, drain well then toss lightly with oil. Pasta like this can be held at room temperature for sevral hours or chilled for several days. To serve, just toss with some butter, salt and pepper in a hot saute pan.
Like most cooks, when making pasta I prefer to use semolina flour which is made from hard winter wheat. It is granular and yellow. However, according to author and chef Guilliani Bugliatti, semolina pasta is a regional specialty; most italian pastas are made with sandard white flour. So, all of this is to say, if you want pasta but only have Gold Medal flour, don't let that stop you.