| A kitchen utensil, also referred to as a Pasta Rolling Machine, that is used to roll pasta dough into thin sheets of pasta. The Pasta Machine may be a motor driven machine or a hand-cranked machine that rolls out the dough, stretches it and then cuts it to size. Larger Pasta Machines are made to mix and extrude dough that will be formed into shaped pasta, however, those are more common in commercial use. For home use, the hand-crank machine is the most popular unless homemade pasta is an everyday event and there is a need or desire to make the process more efficient by using a machine with a motor.
Most often the Pasta Machine is made of stainless steel which encloses a set of rollers through which the pasta dough is rolled. As it passes through the rollers, the machine flattens or stretches the pasta, depending on the setting selected for the thickness, creating a thin to thick strip of dough to be formed into the pasta desired. The machine may also have attachments for cutting various sizes of pasta strips into noodles, linguine, fettuccine or other pastas of this type.
When adjusting the thickness of the dough as it is rolled, if it is made too thin it will not cook properly and will become mushy instead of delicately textured so it is important to understand the machine processes in order to roll the pasta so it provides the results desired. Pasta machines provide a means to produce a fresh, superbly textured and exceptionally flavored product once the art of producing pasta is mastered. |
