Mastering Pasta: The Art and Practice of Handmade Pasta, Gnocchi, and Risotto [A Cookbook] Kindle Edition

The title says you'll gain "mastery" over pasta. But not really. The book would be more appropriately titled "Pasta For Beginners Plus Some Recipes for Advanced Chefs With Access To Rare Ingredients".The book had useful stuff but probably not a good choice if you're only going to read one book about pasta. For starters, it's 10% about making pasta and the rest a bunch of obscure recipes that have various noodles in them. It contains several inaccuracies and cooking myths that avid cooks will probably know but the casual beginner won't recognize and will take to heart as fact. Example? That boiling more water vs less will allow the pot to return to boil more quickly after adding your pasta. FALSE. Just a silly grandma cooking myth. There were others as well.Also, there is very little discussion on shaping pasta beyond some minor overview of rolling out dough. The approach for knife-cut pasta, sheets for ravioli, hand shaped, and extruded noodles are worth an entire chapter if you're going to "master pasta". Which should be drier? Wetter? Stronger dough? Weaker dough? It only received a single paragraph in the book barely hinting at what you need to know.So what do you do after you cut your pasta? Boil immediately? Dry it? Hang it? Refrigerate? Freeze? How does one create a nest that won't stick together after the noodles are cut? Those are mysteries unknown to this book mastering pasta.Interested in flavored and colored pastas like squid ink pasta? Spinach pasta? Not going to find out anything about that in this book.I also felt that a more thorough discussion on pasta shapes would've been warranted for a book proclaiming to master pasta. What influence does the pasta shape and size have on the sauce and final product to consider? Ridges? Tubes? Folds? Thick vs thin? Only a few sentences were offered about this.

On page 10 the author makes an outright false statement about wheat -- that some flavorful wheats not suited for large scale industrial bread bakeries were "too nutritious for our commodity wheat markets." That's an absurd statement which doesn't follow at all from the information he provides before. There are many reasons why some wheats cannot be used in industrial bakeries. Some of the resultant doughs cannot be handled by industrial baking equipment. Most are grown in miniscule quantities and yield far less per acre than other wheats. High nutrition is never a reason why these wheats are not used on a large scale. After this erroneous statement earlier in the book, everything that comes after seems questionable.

Really not about "mastering pasta". I expected a class in making pasta at home, how to make the various shapes, cooking it, perfecting it, tools, where to get them, etc.Nope.You'll learn more about those things from watching a half an hour of YouTube videos from Pasta Grannies and Eataly's pasta guy.This is a slapdash mess, a few unhelpful pictures that fail to really show how to make various pasta shapes by hand, an astonishing lack of instructional pictures on some very esoteric pasta shapes, some complicated recipes. It goes back and forth from a cookbook (not wanted) to too easy and basic to making assumptions about the reader being a semi-expert already.And risotto and gnocchi? Waste of space.I'm completely baffled by the recommendations for this book. It doesn't teach what is says it does. At all.

Fantastic book! I bought this book before I tried making my first homemade pasta. After reading this I viewed making pasta dough in a complete different way than I would have if I would have just tried a recipe off Pinterest . It explains everything you need to know in detail. From different types of wheat, how and why they affect flavor and texture. The importance of fresh ground flour for flavor and nutrients. The different grinds of flour and flour protein amount, how they affect texture and chew. Also how whole eggs, egg yolks, and oils affect the pasta dough. He offers many recipes for many doughs. I found it very inspiring and was excited to go straight to the store and find different flours mentioned in the book to experiment with! Being an adventurous eater I just loved the recipes! They range from furmiliar to a bit exotic! For example. Some recipes include traditional bolognese, ricotta ravioli, spaghetti with tomato basil sauce, pappardelle with rabbit ragu, culurgiones with sweetbreads (veal brain). Unfortunately I live in a rural area far away from the ocean where I cannot get some things for the recipes such as peekytoe crab. It also covers flavoring pasta dough with things like squid ink or parsley. There are chapters on hand forming pasta, pasta sauces, gnocchi and risotto which were a pleasant surprise! I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in making pasta! It captures the history and tradition of Italy and pasta plus an incredible amount of technical information on making your pasta dough!

This is an informative book written by an american restaurant chef.Ingredients are described in US terms although quantities are given in metric and imperial units.My reservation about the book (reason for 3 stars) is the quantity of egg yolks required for the pasta dough eg. Basic Egg Yolk Dough requires 9 egg yolks - the quantity of dough produced is approx 1 lb/454 grams, whilst the Rich Egg Yolk Dough uses 20 egg yolks for the same yield.This seemed a little extravagant. Basic pasta is more frugal.Restaurants may have uses for lots of spare egg whites but I wonder about the domestic cook.My recommendation for a fresh pasta cookbook for UK cooks looking for practical and more economical recipes would be:Pasta - Antonio Carlucciohttps://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1849497966/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A1179QB3UI4TV4&psc=1ORGino's Pasta (Gino D’Acampo)https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ginos-Pasta-Gino-DAcampo/dp/0857832115/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1534165332&sr=1-4&keywords=gino+d%27acampo+cookery+books

Mastering Pasta: The Art and Practice of Handmade Pasta, Gnocchi, and Risotto takes you through the life of pasta, from how it is made and the science behind it, to recipes and how to make certain types of pasta.Whilst the book takes you through many aspects it doesnt always hold your hand, i personally like this as cooking is subjective; as stated at the start of the book (paraphrasing) all cooking environments are different and what is cooked in one kitchen will be vastly different to another.The book helps to give you insight to different meals and flavours that can be accomplished by trying something a little different and not sticking to your standard carbonara or spaghetti bolognese, it should be used as a knowledge base for any budding amateur chef who wishes to improve their skills in pasta making

If you are into pasta then this interesting book is a must. Informative and instructive. It's good to have it in a hard cover although I refer to it so much I may have to get another one 'for best'.

We already did some recipe from that book and they turned amazing. Everything is well explained and it is far more then a recipe book. Explanation about wheat, flour, hydratation and so on make it a useful resource for any one that what to go into pasta making or refine his/her skill set.

As a classically trained chef, this book really appealed to me for its creative variations on several types of pasta. Beautiful photos and genius flavour combinations. Ingredients are accessible and recipes are achievable, even for competent home cooks. Different than your typical Italian pasta cook book and exactly what I was looking for. Would make for very impressive dinner party features. Definitely an MVP in my cookbook collection.