Dough Recipes
The foundation of every pasta shape. 10 base doughs, each suited to different shapes and traditions.
Chestnut Flour Dough
A distinctive, slightly sweet dough made with chestnut flour blended with wheat and semolina flours. Chestnut flour has been used in Italian pasta making for centuries, particularly in the mountainous regions of Lunigiana and Lombardy, where chestnut forests provided an essential food source and helped save on costly wheat flour. The resulting pasta has a dense texture and a subtle, earthy sweetness.
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Saffron Dough
A beautifully golden dough perfumed with saffron, deeply rooted in the pasta traditions of Sardinia where it has been used for centuries to color and flavor flour-and-water doughs. The practice of coloring pasta with saffron is very old, and it produces pasta with a warm, floral aroma and striking golden hue. This dough is used for Sardinian specialties like malloreddus and ciciones.
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Buckwheat Dough
A hearty, nutty-flavored dough that blends buckwheat flour with wheat flour, originating in the Valtellina valley of Lombardy where buckwheat (grano saraceno) has been cultivated since the fourteenth century. Buckwheat is not actually a grain but a herbaceous plant related to sorrel and rhubarb. Because buckwheat flour lacks gluten, it must be combined with wheat flour to hold together — the dough crumbles rather than stretches, requiring careful handling.
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Squid Ink Dough
A dramatic jet-black dough with a briny, mineral-like taste of the ocean. As Marc Vetri puts it: 'You want black dough? You got it.' The ink produces a striking color that pairs perfectly with seafood sauces, and the subtle saline flavor of the squid ink complements ingredients like uni, crab, and shellfish beautifully.
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The most versatile and widely used fresh pasta dough in Italian cooking. Made with flour and whole eggs, it produces a tender, supple sheet that works for everything from long ribbons like tagliatelle to filled pastas like tortellini. As Marc Vetri writes, a basic recipe of 300 grams flour, 3 eggs, a tablespoon of olive oil, and a tablespoon of water will make great fresh pasta every time.
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Rich Egg Yolk Dough
A luxurious dough made with egg yolks rather than whole eggs, producing pasta with a deeper golden color, silkier texture, and richer flavor. Marc Vetri calls this his basic fresh pasta dough, using a 3-to-1 ratio of tipo 00 to durum flour that gives the dough extra bite and a slightly rough texture perfect for holding sauces. The Encyclopedia of Pasta uses 8 yolks for an especially rich result.
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Whole Wheat Dough
A robust, earthy dough made with whole wheat flour that produces pasta with a nuttier flavor and heartier texture than refined-flour doughs. Whole wheat flour tends to absorb more moisture than white flour and creates a slightly less elastic dough, so recipes often include extra liquid or blend whole wheat with other flours. Vetri pairs whole wheat pasta with bold sauces like olive oil-braised octopus, proving that this humble dough can be a worthy partner to sophisticated preparations.
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Flour & Water Dough
A simple, rustic dough made with soft wheat flour (00 or all-purpose) and water — no eggs, and sometimes a touch of olive oil. This is the dough of necessity, born in times when eggs were a luxury reserved for the boss, not for the pasta. It produces a pleasantly chewy, slightly elastic pasta perfect for thick hand-rolled shapes like pici, the fat Tuscan noodles.
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Semolina & Water Dough
An eggless dough made from durum wheat semolina and water, the foundation of southern Italian pasta making. As Pasta Grannies explains, this dough doesn't include eggs because durum wheat already has enough bite. The resulting pasta is sturdy, chewy, and slightly rough-textured — ideal for shaped pastas like orecchiette, cavatelli, and busiate that need to grip robust sauces.
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Spinach Dough
A vibrant green pasta dough made by incorporating blanched, squeezed, and finely chopped spinach into a standard egg dough. Known in Italian as pasta all'uovo verde, this dough is a classic of Emilia-Romagna and is famously used in the 'straw and hay' (paglia e fieno) combination with plain egg pasta. The spinach adds color and a subtle vegetal sweetness without making the pasta taste strongly of spinach.
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