On KitchenAid-ed Pasta

This is just to say, after many, many times of screwing up the extruding process in KitchenAid-aided pasta making, I finally realized the key to making the best fresh noodles (with a pasta maker tool attachment):

The best thing you can do not to screw up noodles is read the instructions — this is an endemic problem, I realize, being someone who often does not read instructions, or more accurately all the instructions. The best thing I learned from reading the instructions were the recommended length of the noodles once they’re being extruded which is only 24 centimeters long (after Googling that appears to be 9.448818898 inches). With a pasta maker, although it’s hard to stop at nine inches, you should stop then — which brings us to the second thing to do: turn off the machine. I was feeling silly that I’d never thought to turn off the machine. Duh.

The third thing I finally realized — and this really was a “duh!” moment — was that by leaving the noodles hanging on the machine before trying to separate the sticky fresh noodles, it made it much easier to actually separate the noodles. I’d always just grabbed a bunch, which kind of mashed them together and made them impossible to separate. So yes, very useful — it’s too bad we’ve been trying to eat less white flour and pasta.