Tri-Color Gluten Free Pasta
I love making pasta by hand and have been experimenting with coloring the dough. I have been wanting to do this for a while and had so much fun making this test batch!
Using spinach powder and tomato powder to color the dough was inspired by browsing the tri-color pasta at the supermarket and noticing what they listed for ingredients. That was how I got started with this recipe.
Read on to see how easy it was to put this together! It was a time consuming but fairly easy process using a scale, small food processor or electric chopper and gnocchi board.
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Ingredients:
- 300 g. gluten free all-purpose flour* (see notes)
- 3 large eggs
- 3/8 tsp. salt
- ice water, 6 tbsp.
- 1 tbsp. tomato powder (6g.)
- 1 tbsp. spinach powder (9g.)
- extra gf flour for rolling
Preparation:
Set up 3 bowls. Place 1/8 tsp. salt in each bowl. To one bowl add 1 tbsp. spinach powder, and to another bowl add 1 tbsp. tomato powder. Add enough flour to each bowl, to equal 100 g. including the vegetable powder and salt.
Next, working with one bowl at a time, add one egg to the bowl of a small food processor and pulse to break it up. Add the flour from the first bowl with 2 tbsp. of ice water and pulse several times, just enough to bring it together into a rough dough. Continue with the next 2 bowls, combining the flour mixture with 1 egg, and 2 tbsp. ice water. As you finish each color dough, press it into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap.
Hint: make the white dough first, so that you don’t have to wash the chopper in between batches.
Let the dough balls rest at room temperature for 20 minutes.
Lightly flour a large cutting board. Working with one color dough at a time, divide the ball in half and roll each section into a rope. Be patient, if it doesn’t roll easily dust with a little flour and gently press down with your palms as you roll the dough back and forth.
Use a bench knife to cut the ropes into 1/4″ pieces. Remember, the pasta will grow when it cooks, so don’t make the pieces too large.
Roll each piece of dough between your palms then use your hand or a bench knife to roll it over a floured gnocchi board to create the ridges.
Place the finished pasta in a single layer on a floured baking sheet. I lined mine with wax paper.
Be sure to follow food safety guidelines and refrigerate egg pasta within one hour if you are not going to cook it immediately.
You can keep the pasta in the refrigerator if cooking the same day. Beyond that I recommend freezing it in an airtight container or freezer safe bag. I placed mine in the freezer right on the baking sheet and when they were firmed up, I transferred them to a Ziploc® bag.
To cook, bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Add the pasta (do not thaw frozen pasta, just throw it into the pot), stir and cover so that the water returns to a boil quickly. Cook for 3 minutes. Be sure to set a timer, fresh pasta cooks very quickly, so don’t overcook! It’s done when it floats to the top.
Drain the cooked pasta and toss with your favorite sauce. I did mine with crumbled sausage, roasted sweet potato and cauliflower, all drizzled with a good olive oil and grated cheese. Use simple ingredients to let the color and flavor of the pasta shine.
Making the pasta was a little time consuming, but I did it on a Sunday and froze it to have during the week. Freezing did not affect the texture at all, and the pasta cooked perfectly to al dente.
Notes ♪♫ I used Better Batter bread flour in this recipe. If you use a different flour, you may have to play with the amount of water needed to bring the dough together. When you shop Better Batter, be sure to use my Promo Code MGFC30 for 30% off at checkout! 😉
