Homemade gluten free pasta: A recipe that works!

I know it’s hard to believe, but this homemade gluten-free pasta dough recipe actually works!!

I’ve tried a lot of gluten-free pasta. A lot. I have tried buying them and I have tried cooking them, recipe after recipe. Back when I used to eat gluten, my favorite thing in the world, my happy place, and my comfort food was a big bowl of pasta. Unfortunately, though most of the GF pasta out there is totally acceptable, it’s not anywhere near the same as the traditional stuff. There are usually strange flavors or textures, or the pasta goes straight from undercooked to mush. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy it’s out there! But I had to find a better option. I really needed a solid recipe for cooking my own homemade gluten-free pasta.

Leave it to America’s Test Kitchen to figure out a recipe that actually works. The flavor has no weirdness, and it cooks up every bit as well as any non-gf pasta that I’ve tried at home. It’s also really easy to make! The fun part about gf doughs is that the chemistry is completely different. You don’t need to work and stretch the glutens; you just need to mix everything really well. I used a pasta machine, so I did run it through the widest setting multiple times, but after all the time I spent in restaurants making pasta, it’s hard to break the habit!

Man, just remembering the nights I’d spend running pounds and pounds of dough through our little pasta machine at one of the restaurants I was working in makes me sweat. We would always have a pasta special, maybe a ravioli or linguine or maybe hand-cut pappardelle, and somehow, it just always wound up being on the list of things that I would have to take care of—as fast as possible. Because we never had any ready for service, pasta-making used to be such a stressful thing!

Now, though, I have this dough! It works well, it’s forgiving, and unlike most pasta doughs, you don’t have to work it like crazy to make it good!

This dough is much softer and less elastic than the pasta dough you might be used to. If you aren’t gentle, it will break apart on you. I made a few changes to their recipe, but really, the recipe was awesome from the start! My changes just make it slightly less traditional and more suited to the food I’ve been making lately. For the original recipe, I can’t recommend this book enough!

Homemade gluten-free pasta dough recipe

Ingredients:

1 2/3 c brown rice flour (plus more for dusting)
1/2 c + 2 Tbs tapioca flour
1 Tbs xantham gum
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 pinch aleppo pepper
1 Tbs olive oil
4 large eggs

Method:

Mix flours, xantham gum salt, and pepper in a food processor until just combined.

Add oil and eggs and mix until the dough comes together and pulls away from the bowl (this shouldn’t take more than 10-20 seconds)

Remove from mixer and knead on a clean counter for about 30-45 seconds. You want it to be a cohesive mix.

Roll into a ball or cylinder, wrap in plastic, and rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Pull out the pasta machine! This dough is really only easy to work with if you run it through the machine. If you try to just roll it with a rolling pin, it’s incredibly difficult to get it thin, and you will almost certainly tear the dough. With a machine, it’s easy!

After resting, remove it from its wrap and cut it into six equal pieces. Work with one piece at a time, leaving the other pieces covered in plastic wrap.

Flatten one piece into a square approximately 4″ by 4″.

Starting on the widest setting, run the dough through, fold it in 1/2, and run it through again. I do this four times, making sure to even my edges as I go.

One setting at a time, run the dough through the machine, making your pieces thinner and thinner until the dough is nearly translucent. If your dough is sticking, dust it or the machine with the extra brown rice flour. If it starts getting too long, cut it in half and keep going.

Once you have thin pieces, you may want to run them through the attachment for spaghetti or linguini using the same technique.

Lay your pasta on a sheet tray covered with a towel dusted with the rice flour. If you are cooking within the next 2 hours, cover with plastic wrap. If you are freezing, make sure your pasta is in a single layer, dust with more rice flour to encourage drying and discourage sticking, and place in the freezer until frozen. Transfer to a plastic bag/storage container.

I’ve made some great dishes lately with my dough!

If you wind up trying this recipe, let me know how it works for you! Here are a few ways I used this homemade gluten-free pasta dough: