9 Homemade Pasta Shapes You Can Make From Scratch

Well bakers, with a simple pasta dough today, I'm going to show you how to make nine completely different pasta shapes. This is a jam-packed video, so get comfortable because you're going to learn a lot. Now we're going to start out by making our semolina dough. So this is an eggless dough, first we have some semolina flour here. This is a durum wheat flour, it is a wheat flour and it's really high in protein. We use this when making pasta because it has a really good al dente bite, it has structure, and it's kind of meaty, it's not delicate like a wheat pasta. So this is the one that we want to make all those lovely shapes. Now into this we're going to add in some warm water. Now I'm going to do this with my hand, you can also do it with a wooden spoon. I'm going to bring the dough together. The warm water helps to just plump up the flour and helps to form your dough. This is a simple dough made by hand and also there's no eggs in it so it's really simple and great for vegans, for people who don't eat eggs. Lovely, I'm going to add a splash more water in there just to hydrate that flour a little bit more. Lovely. I'm going to turn it out onto my countertop and I'm just going to knead it until it forms a smooth ball. Now like I said, you use this semolina pasta for making those shapes because it is very high in protein, it's around 13% so like one of the highest you can get and it just gives you a lovely bite to your pasta. You don't want a regular pasta for this dough. I'm sharing this with you today because it's the beginning of a new year and I love to learn something new every year so I'm going to show you how to make not only your own homemade pasta but all of these different pasta shapes to make a multitude of dishes. Okay there you go, that's my dough, it's nice and smooth. I just kneaded it a little bit on the counter. Once you've shaped it, wrap it tightly in cling wrap. We don't want any air getting at this dough because it dries out pretty fast. So nice and snug, pop it into your fridge for around 30 minutes. Just let it chill, relax a little bit, then we're going to make all our shapes. So our first pasta shape that we're going to do is orecchiette which is a lovely little ear shaped pasta which actually translates into little ears. So it's like a little bit of a cup and it's shaped that way so it can catch the sauce or whatever you're putting on it. It has real bite to it and it's just a really lovely kind of meaty little pasta and it works well with meat sauces or just with pestos or oil and chilli flakes and garlic and things like that. So I'm just going to take a bit of my pasta dough and then make sure you cover the rest tightly in cling wrap because we don't want to let it dry out. So now with our chunk of pasta, we're going to roll it out into a rope around a centimetre thick. Now you might notice that I'm not putting flour on my surface and with a lot of these shapes it doesn't help to put flour on your surface because you want to get traction against the wood or the marble or whatever it is. So refrain from using flour just yet. A centimetre thick, lovely, always have a ruler on hand, perfect. Now for each orecchiette we're going to cut it around one centimetre pieces of dough. Now I know I'm being very technical here but you can eyeball it, something like that. So to get the shape that we want I'm going to dip my fingers in a little bit of flour, my thumb and my finger and here's what we're going to do. Come here to me now, I want you to get nice and close. So put your finger on the piece of dough kind of in the middle, roll it over and then open it up. Look at that, beautiful. Get a little bit more flour if you need it. There's your piece of dough, put your finger down kind of towards the middle, kind of near the edge, roll it over. What you end up with is that little ear. This is a fast dough to shape so just keep on going, move nice and quickly, don't think about it too much. You might not think they all come out perfect but they'll all be delicious. So orecchiette originated in the 12th century in Puglia in southern Italy and still to this day annually they will have big festivals just for this pasta. Orecchiette goes great with broccoli rabe, kale, bitter greens and fava beans sauteed with a little bit of oil and garlic and red pepper flakes. Any way you serve it, it's going to be delicious. So that's our orecchiette, it looks really good so let's move on to our next shape. Malaredus, also known as Sardinian gnocchi. So we're going to take a piece of dough again and we are going to roll it out into a rope just like we did with the orecchiette, around a centimetre. This pasta is from Sardinia and it is a little rolled pasta and it's ridged so it looks just like gnocchi and that's where the name comes from. So the name comes from the Italian word malaru which means small calf. So with our knife and our ruler we're going to cut our pasta a little bit longer, around a centimetre and a half. Now we have our pieces of dough, let's shape them. What you need for this pasta is, you can use the back of a fork like you do with gnocchi but I have here a gnocchi board which is just really handy, I'm going to put a link where you can buy one of these. I'm going to dip my fingers again in a little bit of flour, I'm going to take a piece of dough and then just using the board, roll the dough over on the board and there is your beautiful pasta shape, look at that. Really simple, I'll show you again, put your dough on the board, put your finger there to the top, roll it down, roll the pasta off the board, beautiful. This is another hearty pasta, so for this one what I like to do is actually just do a traditional Bolognese and serve it with like any kind of a meat sauce. I love to make Bolognese here and I've kind of perfected it I think, where I cook it for like a few hours, there's a lot of wine in there, there's only a small bit of tomato which I'm not sure if that's traditional or not, but I think it's absolutely delicious. Look at that, that's our beautiful Malaradus, they are so sweet, I'm going to pop them onto my tray. My gosh, they feel so fluffy and light, I'm going to toss them in a little bit of semolina to stop them sticking to each other, I'm going to let them dry out there, beautiful, look at that, lovely. Next we're going to move on to cavatelli which is very similar to this but even a little bit easier. For the cavatelli we're going to roll out our dough into a rope the same thickness and everything. And we're going to cut it just like the last shape, a centimetre and a half long. So cavatelli is believed to actually be the most ancient pasta shape, originated again from southern Italy, from Puglia. The name cavatelli actually comes from the Italian verb cavare which means to carve out, which makes sense because you will see that these kind of have a little hollow hole in the middle. Beautiful. Now, again, dipped fingers in flour, we are going to take our little piece of dough just like the previous one but we're not rolling it on the board this time, we're going to roll it on our countertop, exact same motion, finger in, roll it over your finger and there you have your cavatelli. You know this is another hearty pasta which will take to a thicker sauce if you want to. You know if you want to keep it simple you can do a tomato sauce or you can do another fine meat sauce with sausage or bolognese or something like that. This pasta shape, once you get the hang of it, you'll really just fly through it. And just remember to keep your thumb floured, it just makes shaping that much easier. This cavatelli looks lovely onto my tray to let them dry out a little bit. Don't forget to toss them in a little bit of semolina. We've created some lovely shapes so far but we've got a few more to go. So trophy pasta is our next shape. Now this one originates from northern Italy, from Liguria, and it's a little bit of an irregular cylinder, kind of a knobbly, funky kind of shape, I'm going to show you how to make it right now. It's a little bit more involved, we're going to roll out our rope again but only to around a quarter of an inch thick, so not too thick at all. This is known for being kind of a short, thin pasta that is twisted. I'm going to cut inch long pieces, again on a flourless surface to make your life easier. Now I'll admit I'm not an expert to making this shape but I'm going to show you how I learned it. Imagine there is a triangle right here that you're rolling to, roll up, using your fingers and your knuckles, roll down, and you kind of get this irregular, for want of a better word, knobbly looking piece of pasta. It has texture, it's a little bit thin on the ends, roll up over your hand, roll back down, around, and there you have it. Do you see this, how it is twisted, a little bit lumpy, and thin, just like that. Up over your hand, go back around, and put pressure on this guy, don't be afraid to put pressure as you're rolling. Traditionally this pasta is served very simply with a pesto. Once you've rolled your pasta, just toss in a little bit of semolina so they don't stick together and it makes it easier to move them. For this pasta you want it to dry out completely before cooking it. Our next shape is a busciati and I feel like that has to be said with a bit of an Italian accent, because it just sounds a little bit more legit if you say it busciati. But the word busciati comes from the word buso, which means to coil, to be twisted, and that's what this is. It's a twisted, coiled piece of pasta, originally from Sicily. Really lovely. You want to roll out a coil to around a quarter of an inch thick, then we're going to cut each piece of pasta around three inches, just like that. Here I have a wooden skewer, something like a skewer or something like that is perfect. We are going to, come here to me and I'll show you, twist and do a little bit of a pull around the skewer, just like that. See this? Coiled and twisted, just like its name. Now we are going to roll it onto our counter, just to kind of flatten out the sides. You see how it just transforms there like that? Slide it off the skewer, again, go down your skewer, give it a little bit of a pull as you go roly-poly on the countertop, flatten it out a little bit, and then gently off your skewer, just like that. Beautiful. Toss it in a little bit of semolina, it just makes it easier for you to handle and stops them sticking together. I'm going to put these onto our tray and then we're going to move on to our next shape, which is olive leaf pasta. Now this lovely pasta gets its name, obviously, because it looks like an olive leaf. It's elongated, it's kind of pointy, it's very beautiful, it's very different. It is popular in both southern and northern Italy, actually. So we want to roll out our rope, again, thin to around a quarter of an inch thick. Cut the rope into pieces one and a half inch long. This is a long pasta. Now what's different about this little piece of pasta is that we take each piece and we just taper it off at the ends, just very quickly and gently. Don't roll it out too much longer, I just want you to taper off those ends because this is going to help with our overall end shape. Using the pressure of your fingers, just roll it and taper off those edges and again, no flour on your countertop. So there we go, we have our piece of pasta. Piece of pasta, we're going to take our knife, we're going to put it kind of towards one edge that's closest to you, roll it over on your knife, similar to how we did the cavatelli. Roll it over, you see this, you get something that looks like an olive leaf, open it up a little bit, look at that, beautiful, how gorgeous is that? Again I'll show you, there's our piece, put the blade over here towards the edge close to you, roll it over until it's all the way rolled over, open up that piece of pasta, beautiful. When you're pushing with the knife, make sure you put a lot of pressure on the blade because you really want to flatten that piece of pasta, you don't want it to be too thick. You're probably seeing now after we've done a few that some of these shapes kind of have similar technique, so once you learn how to make that very simple semolina pasta, the world is your oyster, you can really make whatever shape you like, it just takes a little bit of practice. So this pasta is traditionally served with oil, garlic, some fresh tomatoes, a little bit of chili flakes, or you can do a sauce with tomatoes and porcini mushrooms. Lovely, we are now experts at making olive leaf pasta. Fantastic, let's move on to the next shape which is rigatoni. So the next three shapes I'm going to show you are made with egg pasta because these are a little bit more light and delicate. So like I said we're going to make rigatoni, we're also going to make penne, which is so similar to rigatoni, and then we're also going to make bow tie. So here I have some pasta that has been rolled out on a pasta machine until number 5. For my egg pasta, I've made it before in a video, it is super simple. These next three shapes can't be made with the semolina because it's too thick and it just won't roll the way that you want it to. Now we are going to measure a square, 2 inches by 2 inches to make each the penne and the rigatoni. And just while we're shaping our pasta, make sure you keep it covered up so it doesn't dry out before you shape it. So here I have my board and it's parallel to me because we want the lines to go along the pasta. Put your little square down, I have a nice thick dowel here, and we are going to roll our pasta, push it into the board as you press to get those lines. Do you see that? And we are going to roll it over onto its seam, just like that. And then you take it off your dowel and you have rigatoni. As you roll your pasta, push it into the board to get the indentation of those lines. Roll it over onto the seam, give it a little bit of a push to make that seam stick together and there we have our rigatoni. So those ridges on rigatoni are not just for look, they're actually there so they hold all that lovely sauce that you're going to put on your pasta. So with a rigatoni you can go a little bit heavier, a rich tomato sauce or even a meat sauce will work really well with this pasta. Dust your rigatoni in a little bit of semolina and if you want to you can stand them up to dry so they hold their shape. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. So we're going to roll straight into penne because it's a very similar pasta from a different region, we're talking northern Italy again. So I have my board faced the same way, it's parallel to me, I have my little square which was a square for rigatoni, now we're going to make it a diamond for penne. So watch this, put it on your board like that, facing you just like a diamond, take your dowel and then we're going to roll it just like this over our dowel. Very similar to rigatoni but the direction is different. Penne is another pasta that can hold a hearty sauce if you need it to. So like bolognese, thick tomato sauces, thick meat sauces, things like that. Place your pasta on a tray to dry out and dust it with a little bit of semolina again. Now we're going to make farfalle which we often know as a bow tie pasta. Farfalle means butterfly which is such a sweet little way to think about this pasta and when I start to shape it you'll know why. So here I have a sheet of pasta rolled out to around 6 on your pasta machine, this needs to be nice and thin because we're going to fold over the pasta and we are going to cut squares that are 1.5 inches by 1.5 inches. To get the shape of farfalle I have this like what they call a ravioli roller or a pasta roller and it just gives you those lovely like bumpy edges. So to shape farfalle we're going to take one of our squares, we're going to fold it in the middle, we are going to kind of bring down the edges just like that if you see that and then we are going to pinch it in the middle which gives you this lovely bow tie look and that pinch makes your pasta stick together. This pasta is often served with seafood so try it with a little bit of oil, garlic, arugula, some small calamari just like the way they do in Lombardy. With the egg pastas work a little bit faster because they do start to dry out. Taste your pasta with all the others, toss it in a bit of semolina and let it dry out. So what's our next step now? Well you need to dry your pasta, we always dry our pasta even if you're cooking it off straight away because it needs to be able to hold its shape so dry it for a few hours. What I like to do is just leave it out at room temperature or I live in Los Angeles and I leave it out in the lovely LA sun, let it dry out completely. If you want to store this pasta for a long period of time it does have to be completely dried out or it will go moldy. If you're not drying it out completely pop it into the fridge for up to three days and then cook it off or freeze it. Cook your pasta in a boiling pot of salted water. Semolina pasta takes longer to cook than the flour pasta, it can take anywhere between six minutes going up to even 15 depending on how dry it is. Generally when your pasta starts to float to the top of the water after a few minutes that means it's done. I will say when it comes to these pastas make sure you don't undercook them otherwise they'll be too chewy and hard to eat. I find homemade pasta so satisfying, I adore pasta. When you make it at home from scratch and then you make these incredible, like really beautiful shapes to share with your friends, your family, there's just something so rewarding about it. If your plan for the new year was to learn how to make pasta in nine different shapes then you landed on the right video. Check out all my other videos here, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you back here again really soon.