Pasta Making

While I was away on my teaching practicum, Jane mentioned to Monica that Jack loves making pasta at home. This resulted in Monica mentioning that I have made pasta with the children here at KIDSPACE before and that maybe it would be fun if Jane would like to join me and the children in making pasta when I returned.

Last week was the big day with Jane joining us to make pasta. After lunch all the older children sat around the table and watched while Jane and I set up our pasta machines. We then proceeded to make our pasta dough consisting of eggs and flour, with just a pinch of salt. All the children enjoyed taking turns in stirring the eggs into the flour and then kneeding the dough, preparing the dough for the pasta machine.

The tricky bit of making pasta is putting it through the pasta machine, if it is too wet it will stick to the machine. The machine has 10 settings starting from 1 being the largest, widest setting to 10 being the thinest setting. The children turned the dough through each setting of the machine until we got to the desired thinness. Each time this was done the dough gets thinner and longer and then it's ready to cut into pasta !

After our pasta was all cut and ready, I cooked it up for the children for afternoon tea with a tomato and basil sauce. The children loved it.

Ann