Electric Pasta Maker

Do you love fresh, homemade pasta, but hate the work it takes to make it? An electric pasta machine might be just the thing for you. There are lots of brands and models on the market, but there are a few features you're not going to want to be without. Let's take a look at what an electric pasta machine can do for you and what you should look for when you buy one.

The ideal electric pasta maker would knead and mix the pasta as well as cutting it, be able to make a fairly large amount of pasta in a relatively short amount of time, have a large motor capable of standing up to heavy use and make many different types of pasta. 

The Lello 2730 Pastamaster 3000 Pro meets all these conditions, producing up to three pounds of pasta in around twenty minutes. It comes equipped with a three hundred watt motor and eight pasta discs to make many different types of pastas. Plus, while you can use more complex recipes, all you need to make excellent pasta is flour and eggs.

Whole grain flours work well in this electric pasta maker, too. Just make sure that you use a mix of partial whole grain flour and part refined flour to produce a lighter product. People have the best luck with freshly milled whole grain flour, however, store bought will work just fine. Follow the instructions very carefully to get the best results, and get pasta with a taste and texture that dried products just can't match. You won't go back after you've tried this electric pasta machine.

The machine mixes pasta very well, with stirring paddles designed to produce dough of a perfect consistency in only ten to fifteen minutes. A semolina and whole wheat flour blend makes great pasta with a wonderful texture and high nutritional value. Since the same motor works for mixing and extruding the dough, there's no need to flip a switch to chance operation, and swapping out the dies is really easy. The metal outer ring of each die makes it simple to cut off pasta.

The electric pasta maker is heavy and solidly constructed, so there's no need to worry about it falling off of the counter top, and clean up is easy. Just let it dry with dough still on the machine and disassemble. The recipe instruction booklet is well written, too. Sadly the gearing is somewhat loud, so you have to be prepared for that, and be aware that extrusion can take a while. However, these are relatively minor downsides compared to all the effort of making your own fresh pasta by hand.