Ingredientes

Massa fresca
 6 large free-range eggs

 600 g Tipo '00' flour

 Place the flour on a board or in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and
crack the eggs into it. Beat the eggs with a fork until smooth.
 Using the tips of your fingers, mix the eggs with the flour, incorporating a
little at a time, until everything is combined.
 Knead the pieces of dough together – with a bit of work and some love
and attention they’ll all bind together to give you one big, smooth lump of
dough!
 You can also make your dough in a food processor if you’ve got one. Just
bung everything in, whiz until the flour looks like breadcrumbs, then tip
the mixture on to your work surface and bring the dough together into one
lump, using your hands.
 Once you’ve made your dough you need to knead and work it with your
hands to develop the gluten in the flour, otherwise your pasta will be
flabby and soft when you cook it, instead of springy and al dente.
 There’s no secret to kneading. You just have to bash the dough about a bit
with your hands, squashing it into the table, reshaping it, pulling it,
stretching it, squashing it again. It’s quite hard work, and after a few
minutes it’s easy to see why the average Italian grandmother has arms like
Frank Bruno! You’ll know when to stop – it’s when your pasta starts to
feel smooth and silky instead of rough and floury.
 Then all you need to do is wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge to
rest for at least half an hour before you use it. Make sure the cling film
covers it well or it will dry out and go crusty round the edges (this will
give you crusty lumps through your pasta when you roll it out, and nobody
likes crusty lumps!).
 How to roll your pasta:
First of all, if you haven't got a pasta machine it's not the end of the world!
All the mammas I met while travelling round Italy rolled pasta with their
trusty rolling pins and they wouldn't even consider having a pasta machine
in the house! When it comes to rolling, the main problem you'll have is
getting the pasta thin enough to work with. It's quite difficult to get a big
lump of dough rolled out in one piece, and you need a very long rolling
pin to do the job properly. The way around this is to roll lots of small
pieces of pasta rather than a few big ones. You'll be rolling your pasta into
a more circular shape than the long rectangular shapes you'll get from a
machine, but use your head and you'll be all right!
 If using a machine to roll your pasta, make sure it's clamped firmly to a
clean work surface before you start (use the longest available work surface
 you have). If your surface is cluttered with bits of paper, the kettle, the
bread bin, the kids' homework and stuff like that, shift all this out of the
way for the time being. It won't take a minute, and starting with a clear
space to work in will make things much easier, I promise.
 Dust your work surface with some Tipo ‘00’ flour, take a lump of pasta
dough the size of a large orange and press it out flat with your fingertips.
Set the pasta machine at its widest setting - and roll the lump of pasta
dough through it. Lightly dust the pasta with flour if it sticks at all.
 Click the machine down a setting and roll the pasta dough through again.
Fold the pasta in half, click the pasta machine back up to the widest
setting and roll the dough through again. Repeat this process five or six
times. It might seem like you're getting nowhere, but in fact you're
working the dough, and once you've folded it and fed it through the rollers
a few times, you'll feel the difference. It'll be smooth as silk and this
means you're making wicked pasta!
 Now it's time to roll the dough out properly, working it through all the
settings on the machine, from the widest down to around the narrowest.
Lightly dust both sides of the pasta with a little flour every time you run it
through.
 When you've got down to the narrowest setting, to give yourself a tidy
sheet of pasta, fold the pasta in half lengthways, then in half again, then in
half again once more until you've got a square-ish piece of dough. Turn it
90 degrees and feed it through the machine at the widest setting. As you
roll it down through the settings for the last time, you should end up with a
lovely rectangular silky sheet of dough with straight sides - just like a real
pro! If your dough is a little cracked at the edges, fold it in half just once,
click the machine back two settings and feed it through again. That should
sort things out.
 Whether you're rolling by hand or by machine you'll need to know when
to stop. If you're making pasta like tagliatelle, lasagne or stracchi you'll
need to roll the pasta down to between the thickness of a beer mat and a
playing card; if you're making a stuffed pasta like ravioli or tortellini,
you'll need to roll it down slightly thinner or to the point where you can
clearly see your hand or lines of newsprint through it.
 Once you've rolled your pasta the way you want it, you need to shape or
cut it straight away. Pasta dries much quicker than you think, so whatever
recipe you're doing, don't leave it more than a minute or two before
cutting or shaping it. You can lay over a damp clean tea towel which will
stop it from drying.