600 + 300 = 900

I was too tired, last night, to work on more pasta dough, and I woke up too late this morning to do anything more than make some dough and put it in the fridge. You're normally supposed to bring the dough together (including kneading), let it rest in the fridge for thirty minutes to allow the gluten to relax, then bring it out, cut the dough ball into smallish pieces, flour the pieces, partly roll them out on the table, then start running them through your handy-dandy pasta mill (which you've finally learned how to clamp to the table properly), eventually ending up with stringy lengths of fresh pasta. I stopped the process right at the "refrigerate for thirty minutes" part, but instead of being in the fridge for thirty minutes, the pasta's going to be in there all dingle-damn day. So I'm a bit worried about what's going to happen, and I'm trying to reassure myself that, if thirty minutes is a good amount of time for the pasta dough to rest, then all day is even better. I don't know if that's true, but that's what I'm going with.*

Side note: when the experts talk about how gluten "relaxes," they aren't fucking around. I saw this with the first batch of pasta dough I'd kneaded the other day: when I finished kneading the dough, it was tense, almost like a clenched muscle. But after thirty minutes in the fridge, the dough had literally relaxed, becoming soft and pliable enough for my fingertips to sink gently into it as I handled it. It was the exact opposite of rigor mortis: a quickening.

Ultimately, I'm making three batches of pasta dough, with one batch being 300 g of flour and three eggs (plus a bit of salt and olive oil). So that's 900 g of flour and nine eggs in total. This morning, I slapped together 600 g of flour and six eggs, i.e., two batches' worth. As Charles wrote in his bread-making instructions, a medium egg's contents will weigh about 50 grams. Despite knowing that, I was startled when I weighed my kneaded dough ball and saw it was around 900 grams. My brain had attached to the number "600" because of the 600 grams of flour. But then I did the math: 600 g of flour + 300 g of eggs = 900 g of pasta dough. One more batch to make tonight. 1.2 kilos of pasta for four people... that's enough, right?

---

*A UK-based website called The Happy Foodie says: "A fresh ball of dough can be made up to 2 days before shaping; just wrap it tightly in cling film and refrigerate. Fresh pasta that has been shaped can be tossed with a little flour, packaged in airtight plastic bags, and refrigerated for up to 2 days, or frozen for up to 4 weeks." So there we are. My pasta ought to be locked and loaded. I'll be making noodles tonight, babe.