It is really interesting to read all the tips and methods that people follow. I did try the Bionature pasta and I really loved the texture of the whole wheat. We tried both the spagetti and the fusili and it was really good. A couple of kids who were visiting seemed to prefer that to the barilla version (I made both). I am very intrigued by the hydrated cold water pasta method. I am going to give that a try as DH is the dishwasher in chief and he is not happy when I pul out my 8qt pasta pot with the colander insert. Sauce coating the pasta - I feel that this is kind of important as I like to make pasta with just enough sauce - not too much. Have blobs of sauce on the plate that you can spoon up would be not nice in my books. I saw that with the bronze die pasta (Bionature), the pest kind of coated it better. I did not see the much uncoated surface of the pasta. The Barilla was not coated as much. It would be nicer to taste the sauce first and not the blandness of pasta.Whether the extra cost of the bronze die pasta is worth it or not is a personal call. Mileage may vary there and as someone suggested, it may be more important for some recipes but not others. Carrying the argument to the other extreme, a super slick pasta version might be rice noodles or one of those zero cal tofu noodles. Nothing sticks to that :)

When I was a little kid on the farm my Grandmother used to make home made egg noodles. She would send one of us boys to the hen house to get the eggs, and one of the other boys had to get her clothes line and stretch it from two hooks on opposite sides of her huge kitchen. She then set up her breadboard and began mixing rolling and cutting the noodles. When she had them cut she would take ordinary wire coat hangers and fold a piece of butcher paper over the bottom wire, then hang the noodles on the coat hanger and hang that on the clothes line near the ceiling. She had an old coal stove so it was always warm to moderately hot near the ceiling, even in mid winter when it was zero outside. When the noodles were dry she would put them in two or three wide mouth 2gallon glass jars and tuck them in the pantry. She also used that same line to dry herbs or fruit. I can remember her sitting for hours peeling and slicing apples, which she then slipped on wire hooks she had made from old coat hangers and hung them on the line. After all the fresh apples in the root cellar began getting a bit mushy she would use those dried apples to make pies, cakes and struedles.

The Princess is amazing and I just love the time the two of you spend together. She is beautiful, hair brushed or not, and seems to just soak up everything she can from you. You are a blessing because you make the time to do things with your grandkids and you tell the love that is involved.

I too have been making both pasta and egg noodles for a very long time. I use a hand crank - the Atlas Marcato Wellness. I make the dough in a food processor which takes me no longer than 5 minutes from adding the ingredients to forming a ball with my hands and wrapping it to let it rest. BTW, hand 'crank' is misleading as it sounds as if you are working hard. Nope. It's easy to run pasta through the hand crank. Kneading is done on the pasta machine at the thickest setting, 2-3 runs, then you begin making thinner and thinner dough, depending on what you are making. For 2 batches of dough, enough for 4 - 6 people or servings, it takes me a total of 15-20 minutes to knead, stretch, run through the cutters, and hang on my trees and chopsticks. It's fast and easy. The only additional time is the 30 minute rest (outside the fridge, never in), which I use for other things such as sauces, and to quickly set up my machine. On the Atlas, the cutters are just in front of the rollers, so I roll, then run through the cutter, swapping the crank handle to one then the other. Plllog is correct, you do not wash pasta machines. They will rust at some point and clog your machine with dried glue-dough. Your dough should not require an extra dusting of flour when putting it through any machine, hand crank or electric. A simple soft pastry brush will dust off any small excess, while a soft cloth is used to rub away any smudges of olive oil. Waxed paper can be doubled and run through the cutters for best cleaning. No water is used to clean them. You should not have dough anywhere using these methods. Egg noodles are wider and tend to have more egg in them. I add an egg yolk or two to my flour mixture and use only wheat flour, oil, water, and a bit of salt (you can go salt-free). You can add rice flour which will add to the stretch, though I almost never do. I add it only to potsticker doughs and such. Italian Pasta (my neighbor was from Sicily and very particular about pasta) uses a mixture of semolina flour, wheat flour, whole egg, oil, water, and a pinch of salt. I use less semolina than my neighbor did as I have a hard time with the dryer dough breaking off as it's drying. Both have eggs, it's the amount of egg. Freshly made noodles require a slightly short cooking time. Otherwise, you dry your noodles (of whatever thickness and width your wish for your specific dishes) on chopsticks weighted and hanging over a counters, on pasta trees, or whatever you can make up. For egg noodles in chicken soup I will place them on a very lightly dusted flour cookie sheet - and once dried, dump the whole lot into a freezer bag, then add the whole lot to my stock - the small bit of extra flour tends to give a very slight body to the chicken and noodles stock. Otherwise, extra flour is not ever needed. One day drying is often sufficient. The noodles can then be places in a sealed bag and frozen. You boil them (egg or pasta noodles) from frozen, never thawing them or they will be gummy. If you choose to freeze, they still have the homemade taste and quality of fresh made noodles. Not like store bought. There is a difference. The different doughs have nothing to do with what part of the US you live in. I live in the South East. Dough differences have to do with preferences, or egg vs. Italian. Many pastas are also hand formed. That is time-consuming, and a labor of love, but often worth it as they hold sauces nicely. I'm no pasta machine snob, other than I don't want those nasty grayish streaks in my pasta (coming off poor quality metals). Electric or hand, either works fine. Both have various cutters. Whichever you get, enjoy! Adding beet juice, fresh herbs to the dough as you process or mix it adds lovely flavor when desired.