It is compact, about the size of toaster, sort of, but heavy, and made in Italy. It was on sale @ Williams-Sonoma and it was screaming my name. I had a good chat w/ one of the Gals @ the store about how to use it, what flour, etc. She suggested using Semolina flour. Semolina is derived from the Italian word semola, meaning bran.This is derived from the ancient Latin simila, meaning flour, itself a borrowing from Greek σεμίδαλις (semidalis), groats, or as we know them, grits. Semolina flour has more bite, I love the yellow color, and I knew I wanted to try it out. So, maybe using a new dough and a new pasta maker @ the same time was not the brightest idea. The photo shows how perfect the angel hair pasta is cut, how lovely and shiny the dough. What you do not see in the pic is the pasta all over the floor, the white flour and the semolina flour everywhere!!! The dough rolled out so thin and much much longer than I had anticipated. My order of 'things' was well, out of order and I made a gi-normous mess. Some of the thin, perfectly cut pasta stuck together because I did not use enough of either the regular or the semolina flour to keep the strands from sticking, and I had to throw some away because of the clumping. It was one of those moments, where I looked around, and had to laugh at myself, thinking this was straight out of a 'Lucy and Ethel' escapade. The good news is that the pasta, which survived, took all of 30 seconds to cook and was good. It was very good, and the pasta maker worked like a charm!! So, next time, I am going to use a combination of white and semolina flours from a recipe I found, and I will better prepared, armed w/ parchment paper to lay out the pasta in layers rather than nesting. This is not earth shattering by any stretch, stretch being the operative word, but, it's fun, and there is food to be had @ the end of the process!!!
'She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.'
Proverbs 31:27
