Difficulty Level Easy

I invited my son over the other day to help me make some pasta with the new pasta maker that he and his sister gave me for Christmas. We went to our local organic market and blew the weekly grocery budget by buying fresh chanterelles to have with the pasta. It was, as he would say, delightful.

It was only my second time using the machine and I wanted to try the pasta recipe in the January Gourmet which was different from the recipe I had used before. We had some trouble with the pasta dough (we decided our eggs hadn't been large enough) and it took a really long time to make it all. That, and the fact that Hugh decided that we needed to make the entire recipe for 12, rather than cutting it down for the three of us. Needless to say, I sent the rest of the fresh pasta home with him to share with his roommates. Children are cunning that way. It turned out to be a snap and it had a very wet dough, so it rose quite quickly. The recipe makes three free form loaves and worked out very well, although I thought it needed a bit more salt. It made very nice toast, which is one of my requirements for a good loaf of bread. The recipe suggests fennel, sesame or poppy seeds. Hugh is a big fan of fennel so that's what we used. Needless to say, he took home bread, as well as pasta.

I used unbleached all-purpose flour for this. I've never used bread flour, and I'm not sure what the difference is. I'm giving you the instructions to make this by hand, but if you have a stand mixer, you know what to do.

INGREDIENTS