Syzygies Posted November 12, 2023 Report Share Posted November 12, 2023 I'm back to playing with my bigolaro for Italian pasta. (Past experiments have been mostly Asian, such as fermented rice noodles for Thai Kanom Jeen Nahmyah Bpak Dtai, or alkaline noodles for ramen.) There's a narrow dough hydration window, dry enough to extrude yet wet enough to knead. Kneading helps develop gluten, if possible. I'm well on the way to breaking my Atlas 150 pasta maker, as I've long wanted to do in order to justify an upgrade. Dough for extruding can be that stiff. Looking at upgrades, I saw hand cranked dough sheeters aimed at pasta. David: Would a truly stiff dough break your machine? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Chang Posted November 13, 2023 Author Report Share Posted November 13, 2023 Quote David: Would a truly stiff dough break your machine? absolutely 😇 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted November 30, 2023 Report Share Posted November 30, 2023 On 11/12/2023 at 10:11 PM, Syzygies said: I'm well on the way to breaking my Atlas 150 pasta maker Have you tried using a pasta roller attached to your kitchen machine @Syzygies? I use the pasta roller that I bought with my Kenwood Chef and it works well but I will admit that the dough I make is not especially stiff. If you haven't tried a kitchen machine version I would be happy to try it out for you on mine if you tell me how you make the dough. And yes, I covet your bigolaro! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted January 25 Report Share Posted January 25 Look what you made me do @Syzygies! I now have my very own bigolaro. Now this isn't just any old acquisitive KK shopping channel purchase. No. Our place in Italy is in a town called Padova and one of their specialities is ragu di corte with bigoli. I make that ragu very well, to the extent that Italians ask me for my recipe. The bigolaro is named for the pasta, bigoli, that goes with ragu di corte. It is an extruded pasta, slightly thicker than spaghetti. And the best bit of all? The factory is less than an hour's drive away so we made the trip to Marano Vicentino to pick up this beauty. I hope to have time to try it out on our next trip. I just bought two dies but look what there was to choose from. Wasn't I good to be so restrained? 1 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacKenzie Posted January 26 Report Share Posted January 26 I hope you are going to teach us a lesson on how to use that new tool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted January 27 Report Share Posted January 27 17 hours ago, MacKenzie said: I hope you are going to teach us a lesson on how to use that new tool. I'm hoping @Syzygies will turn up to tell me how he uses his and what consistency of pasta dough is required to get it to work well. I am keen to make wholewheat pasta as the normal white pasta sends my glucose levels soaring. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syzygies Posted January 27 Report Share Posted January 27 On 1/25/2024 at 5:17 AM, tekobo said: I just bought two dies but look what there was to choose from. Wasn't I good to be so restrained? Wow. I freaked at that picture, thinking that was now your stash! There's a pretty good learning curve, nothing that will throw you, but many would give up. Let me send you an upgraded handle! The traditional handle is the weak link in the design. Being too stubborn with a too stiff dough, I managed to widen its hole. I then went through several spectacular failures of embarrassing experiments making a replacement handle, before recognizing that the forces involved were beyond my usual experience. One can spend five minutes in Adobe Illustrator, then upload a design to a professional laser cutting service such as SendCutSend. I did, and I'm thrilled with the result. As for dough, I keep a MacOS Numbers spreadsheet of all attempts, which computes target hydrations for me. Too wet a dough just sticks together, but too dry can jam the bigolaro and make it howl. One wants to nevertheless go as dry as practical. This is easiest mixing the dough in a food processor (I mix other doughs by hand or in a stand mixer). Working without exact measurements, people tend to aim for a dough that just barely clumps together. A principle I've learned the hard way: The dough has to taste good. One can extrude any dough, this isn't a constraint. It nevertheless reminds me of traditional Japanese woodworking. They use a rice paste as glue. It's not really a glue in the sense of Titebond III Ultimate Wood Glue, or even traditional rabbit skin glue, but rather a mechanical stabilizer to fill faint gaps in the elaborate joinery that actually secures the structure. So the new guy is tasked to cook the rice. He asks what to aim for? "So it tastes good." I use food grade silicone grease on the shaft and die holder, wiping excess with a paper towel. I use a strap wrench to remove the die holder when it gets stuck. I rub a bit of olive oil around the plunger. If I've concerned that the bigolaro will howl halfway through, I feed the dough in several steps so the last portion doesn't get too compressed (aspiring to turn to diamond). I separate the strands, shaking on cornstarch if needed; flour will clump rather than dissolve away, cooking. For Asian noodles such as rice, one can extrude straight into boiling water as I saw done in a kanom jeen namya breakfast establishment in Thailand (had to throw that in to keep Dennis paying attention...) It's easiest to learn on fat extrusions like fusilli, as they easily separate, and can be cut shorter once they dry a bit. A related puzzle is how to clean the dies. Restaurants just soak them, changing the water daily, and toss the first dough to come out. A dental water pick does a reasonable job, once they've soaked. I happen to use an electric pressure washer, outside. We bought one to maintain our ipe deck, but I also use it to clean our Mexican molcajetes, whose open grain can trap food. I intend to make a tongue-in-cheek YouTube video on all this, going into the woodworking for my pressure washer die holder, suggesting with a straight face one should install an ipe deck to justify the pressure washer purchase, even though it's really to support the bigolaro. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted January 28 Report Share Posted January 28 Great! I knew I could rely on you to have tested this piece of kit to breaking point @Syzygies. I will send you my email address via private message and if you could send me your file for the handle I will see what can be manufactured here in the UK. In the meantime it sounds like it wouldn't do me any harm to start practising with different flours and dough "recipes" to get to one I like before embarking on my bigolaro journey. We return to Italy in March and I hope to try out the bigolaro then. Lots of helpful tips above thank you. Hope to be able to return the favour once I have got going. Apologies to @David Chang for hijacking his dough sheeter thread! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Chang Posted January 28 Author Report Share Posted January 28 no worries, online thread making does not imply ownership so post away your results with the new machine! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C6Bill Posted February 1 Report Share Posted February 1 Seeing that spreadsheet makes me sad. I had a drive failure and lost the one i made for bread and pizza dough. I could just change the hydration i was after and it would change all the ingredients. Or change the number of dough balls and all the numbers would be right there for me. Oh well, at least now i have a more robust backup plan in place 🥴 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syzygies Posted February 1 Report Share Posted February 1 2 hours ago, C6Bill said: Seeing that spreadsheet makes me sad. I had a drive failure and lost the one i made for bread and pizza dough. Yes, my spreadsheet was inspired by my bread spreadsheet, for sourdough batards from freshly ground flour. Various people here have adopted my method for producing steam in the KK. What I don't really understand is how my process is like releasing a marble in a spherical bowl; no matter how I start out, I end up a few iterations later with exactly the same recipe. I'd like a few variants in the rotation... Now that I'm retired I want to take the bread intensives at the San Francisco Baking Institute. Michel Suas wrote Advanced Bread and Pastry, a professional tome that makes it clear a well-trained French chef has a PhD understanding of cooking. That remains the only book I know that addresses the challenge of "green flour", freshly ground flour that hasn't aged. I now add 60 parts per million ascorbic acid. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted February 1 Report Share Posted February 1 Hey @Syzygies. I am only doing this because my husband dared me to. He asked if anyone would challenge you to tell the difference with an addition of 60 parts per million ascorbic acid. Have you tried with and without and can you genuinely tell the difference? 🫣 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C6Bill Posted February 2 Report Share Posted February 2 I found a few similar spreadsheets online so i will use one of those and start over. I really needed it for the pizza dough but i havent made pizza in awhile so it was no great loss. I'm retired so i guess i have the time to work on a new one 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syzygies Posted February 2 Report Share Posted February 2 5 hours ago, tekobo said: Have you tried with and without and can you genuinely tell the difference? I only started because I had a problem with freshly ground flour. Not to be unduly graphic, but also in England there must be country walks where there's a giant flat brown disk of bovine origin? When one doesn't adjust for green flour, that can be how a loaf comes out. Some people don't have this problem. Adding AA changes the limit on hydration. I'd turn this around: Only a moron would take typical doses of vitamin C after seeing the difference 60ppm makes in bread. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
