---
title: "A Love Letter to Pasta: Making Every Shape by Hand"
created: 2026-04-12 09:00
author: Amelia Fontaine
keywords: pasta, handmade, tagliatelle, pappardelle, pici, orecchiette, technique
description: The dough formula, rolling technique, and how to make tagliatelle, pappardelle, pici, and orecchiette by hand — a complete guide to fresh pasta.
---

# A Love Letter to Pasta: Making Every Shape by Hand

I grew up with a mother who bought fresh pasta from the supermarket and a father who considered this acceptable on weeknights. My grandmother, who had come from Lyon and regarded Italian cooking with the respectful curiosity of someone married into another culture, learned to make pasta by hand from Lucia. When I was old enough, I learned from her.

Making pasta by hand is one of the most meditative tasks in cooking. It requires no special equipment beyond a rolling pin and a clean surface. It takes about 45 minutes from flour to cut pasta. The result is something that dried pasta cannot be: light, silky, absorbent, and briefly alive — it cooks in 60–90 seconds and grips sauce in a way that even very good dried pasta does not.

## The Dough

There are two foundational pasta doughs:

**Egg pasta (pasta all'uovo)**: 100g 00 flour + 1 large egg. This is the standard for Northern Italian pasta — tagliatelle, pappardelle, maltagliati. The eggs add richness and colour.

**Eggless pasta (pasta di semola)**: 100g semolina flour + approximately 50ml warm water. This is the standard for Southern Italian pasta — orecchiette, pici, cavatelli. The semolina provides more structure and a pleasantly chewy bite.

**Method for egg pasta:**
Mound the flour on a clean surface. Make a well in the centre. Crack the eggs into the well. Beat gently with a fork, gradually incorporating flour from the inner edge of the well. When the dough is shaggy, use your hands to bring it together. Knead for 8–10 minutes until smooth, elastic, and slightly tacky — it should spring back when poked. Wrap and rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. This rest is important: the gluten relaxes and the dough becomes easier to roll.

**Method for semolina pasta:** Combine flour and water until it comes together. Knead for 10 minutes — semolina dough is stiffer and more resistant than egg pasta. Wrap and rest for 30 minutes.

## Tagliatelle

The canonical fresh pasta of Emilia-Romagna. Traditionally the width of a tagliatelle ribbon should equal one-twelfth the height of the Amalfi tower (8mm), according to a 1972 decree by the Italian Academy of Cuisine. This is the kind of precision I respect in all the wrong areas of life.

Roll the egg dough to about 1–2mm thickness. Dust well with flour. Fold loosely into a cylinder (fold once, then again). Cut into strips 6–8mm wide. Immediately unfurl and dust with more flour to prevent sticking. Cook within the hour or refrigerate.

**Thickness guide:** Thicker (2mm) for Bolognese and ragù — the pasta holds up to a heavy sauce. Thinner (1mm) for butter and sage, browned butter, or delicate cream sauces.

## Pappardelle

As tagliatelle but wider — 2cm or more. Traditionally paired with rich braises: wild boar ragù, the braised hare ragù of Tuscan restaurants, or the mushroom pappardelle from earlier in this blog. The width means more sauce per bite; the egg richness stands up to strong flavours.

Roll to 2mm, fold and cut to 2–2.5cm widths.

## Pici

Pici is the hand-rolled pasta of Tuscany — the pasta every Sienese child learns before they learn anything else. It requires semolina dough, no special equipment, and works through pure repetition.

Roll the semolina dough into a rough rectangle about 1cm thick. Cut into strips 1cm wide. Take each strip and, working from the centre outward, roll against the clean surface with both palms to create a long, uneven, thick spaghetti — ideally 30–40cm long and about 3–4mm in diameter. Irregularity is correct and desirable.

Pici is paired classically with a simple sugo of garlic and tomato (*all'aglione*) or with a ragù. Their thickness means they cook in 5–6 minutes in well-salted boiling water.

## Orecchiette

"Little ears" — the pasta of Puglia, shaped by dragging a small piece of semolina dough across a rough wooden board with a blunt butter knife. This is the pasta I find most satisfying to make because the technique is so counterintuitive until it clicks.

Work with small pieces of semolina dough (about 10g each). With the tip of a butter knife, press down and drag the dough towards you across a lightly floured rough wooden surface. The dough will curl around the tip of the knife. With your thumb, invert the curl over your thumb to create the ear shape. It takes 10–15 attempts before the motion becomes automatic.

Orecchiette is traditionally served with cime di rapa (turnip tops) in a sauce of garlic, anchovy, chilli, and olive oil. The ear shape collects the sauce and the pieces of wilted green in their hollows.

## On Making Pasta

There is a moment, usually on the third or fourth time you make tagliatelle, when the dough feels right under your hands without thinking about it. The texture, the resistance, the way it responds to the rolling pin — it becomes familiar. This is the beginning of what cooking by feel means: not improvisation or instinct but accumulated sensory memory.

Pasta is one of the fastest routes to this kind of knowledge because the feedback is immediate — you see the result within an hour, eat it within two — and because the variables are limited: flour, egg, water, time. There is nowhere to hide in a good plate of tagliatelle al burro. You can taste the pasta clearly, assess the flour, assess the dough, and begin to understand the decisions that produced what you're eating.

This is why I keep making it by hand even when I have perfectly good dried pasta in the cupboard. The point is not efficiency. The point is understanding.
