I heartily recommend the dough hook. I haven't kneaded anything by hand since I got my KA with the dough hook (and I made bread for years before I got the KA). What a wonderful and useful thing it is.

But wouldn't the Pasta dough be too dry to use the dough hook? Bread yes, you have the moisture and elasticity, but the pasta I have made by hand is borderline crumbly. I guess all you can do is try, and if it doesn't work, it's back to the board by hand! Let us know how it works out, it sure would save a lot of work!

I use the food processor for pasta dough.

I'm with foodonastump -- I use the food processor for pasta dough and find that it works really well.

I think most people use the food processor for pasta dough. I use it sometimes, but I generally prefer to knead it by hand, partly because I like doing it and partly because I greatly dislike cleaning the FP parts.

For making bread, I use a dough hook and do very little kneading by hand. When I worked in a restaurant, I used a Hobart machine to knead bread dough that I made into cinnamon rolls. There's no way I could have kneaded that much dough by hand, and so if you are doing large quantities of pasta dough, it makes sense to make it in a food processor.

Lars

Thanks for the quick responses.

I'll try both the dough hook and the food processor on the we/end and let you know the results.

I wondered too if the dough would dry out too much in the Kitchenaid.

I make fresh pasta all the time and only use the food processor. I bring the dough barely together using as little water as possible, wrap it in Saran wrap, and refrigerate it for a while. The only kneading that takes place when I do it is done by my pasta roller. I roll it on the widest setting and fold it in thirds and put it through "sideways" a couple times before I start to roll it on progressively narrower settings...

When I was still an island girl I made everything by hand including noodles and bread. Now that I am WAY up north, I got lazy (well, maybe just spoiled LOL) I have a pasta machine for pasta and my dough hook to make bread. We don't have a dish washer so have to save the energy to do washing up! :-) Al

I use the dough hook in the mixer for the initial pulling together of the pasta dough. Then I use the pasta roller as jaz described for the "kneading" to make it act like proper pasta dough.

Yes, I use the mixer for all the kneading. Let the dough rest, then use the pasta roller to flatten for cutting. All is done on a KA mixer. It takes patience to get the pasta dough mixed enough to use with the hook.

KA sells pasta attachements and their recipes are for mixing the dough in the KA mixer. They say mix with the paddle 30 seconds, the hook for 2 minutes and then knead by hand to bring it together for 30 seconds to a minute. I think you could use only the hook but it would take longer to come together.

Since I have no KA or dough hook, it's got to be by hand. I think it would be great to try one, but think I would still do the last of the kneading by hand just to get the feel.

Dough hooks tend to aerate dough too much, that's a food fact, as well as an opinion. If you have a Zojirushi bread machine, I'd suggest using it for kneading, or a food processor.

It's also about the type of flour used, which is milled from durum wheat (semolina or durum flour), not hard and soft wheat (all-purpose or bread flour). The difference is in the dominate protein from the gluten group.

The two types of protein that make up the prolamins are glutenins and gliadins. Durum wheat, the wheat with the highest amount of protein, has a dominance for gliadins necessary for good pasta, but it's not the correct protein for yeast breads. Flour used for breads (hard wheat, or a combination of hard and soft wheat) have a dominance of glutenins for extensibility.

Check a pasta box for ingredients and it nearly always says durum flour. Semolina is derived from durum, it's just a coarse grind from the endosperm of the grain (bran and germ removed). Whole wheat pasta is made with the entire grain of durum milled into a flour or a coarse grind to resemble semolina. I mill durum wheat into a flour or a coarse grind (similar to fine cornmeal) using my Nutrimill, which is what I use for noodles or pasta, and my Zojirushi bread machine for kneading. A bread machine is designed to knead dough without aerating it.

You use flour for noodles and semolina for pasta, which is another simple tip.

-Grainlady