There's almost nothing that makes me feel like I'm back in Italy more than making pasta. Before we lived in Umbria, making pasta was a production. I'd have to get someone taller than me (which used to just be Keith, though now Nicolas and Siena both are included in that dubious honor) to stretch his freakishly long arms into the cabinet above the fridge to nudge out the pasta machine. Then I'd dust it off, and look up a recipe for pasta, and start mixing, resting, folding, and cranking. Inevitably, the arm of the crank would fall onto the floor and I'd swear in a parent-appropriate manner out loud and in a parent-inappropriate manner under my breath, and I'd reinsert the arm and it would just pop out again about 10 turns later. And then I'd remember why I never made pasta.

But in Umbria, I learned how to ROLL pasta. Really roll it. On a board. Which seemed like a giant pain. After all, they make machines for this. Expensive and shiny machines should make it easier, right?

Wrong.

My pasta lesson with Conci, an Umbrian mamma, was my first inkling that modern conveniences are always modern but not always convenient. Sometimes old is better. Sometimes there's a reason why people did things a certain way for generations. And sometimes, removing us from the process of making food really just divides us from understanding our food. Rolling pasta by pushing and stretching it against wood isn't harder or more complicated. In fact, it can be done much more quickly and efficiently than with a pasta machine, and as an added bonus, we are connected to generations of pasta makers in the sun-soaked hills of Italy, and connected to our food, and connected to our intention to create a meal.

Here is the second thing I learned: Pasta takes the texture on which it's rolled. So pasta rolled on wood adopts the nuanced texture of the wood. That texture holds sauce like minuscule pockets. Tiny sauce pockets—genius. Pasta rolled on metal (like with a pasta maker) creates pasta with the texture of glass. Sauce just slides right off.

And the third thing I learned—no recipe is required. What is required is top-notch ingredients. Pasta is just eggs and flour. If one of those is sub-par, how can the pasta hope to be transcendent? It just plain can't. So get those farm eggs with the vivid orange yolks from happy chickens clucking into the wind. And get that high-quality flour (it doesn't, contrary to popular opinion, have to be 00. In fact, Conci uses 0, with a little shake of wheat flour to provide a bit of bite).

I detail specific instructions for making pasta in “Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center” (my memoir of living in Italy), here I’ll sketch out the basic process.

First gather your ingredients:

3 eggs at room temperature
a jot of olive oil
good quality flour, roughly four cups

Now, gather your supplies. You’ll need two things, a wooden rolling pin (not your fancy marble one, no texture there!) and a wooden board (again, not your fancy marble countertop, I can't even use my finished bamboo butcher block island—you want something with a fine-grain texture). Both can be easily purchased in Italy (we got my rolling pin at GranCasa, a housewares department store), and make great souvenirs.

The rolling pins come in different sizes based on how many eggs are in the dough. My rolling pin is a 3 egg rolling pin, so this means that I add flour to three beaten eggs until it forms the dough, then I roll it until the dough is a rough circle with a diameter about the size of the rolling pin. Basically, the pin assures me that the dough is rolled thin enough. My 3 egg rolling pin is about 30" long. If you don't have a trip to Italy planned in your future, you can get a pin from Artisanal Pasta Tools. You can also just use your basic wooden rolling pin, though you'll have to make sure it's thin enough with your hands and your eyes, and won't be able to rely on the pin to tell you. Pro-tip: Err on the side of too thin.

As for the board, you can find these on Amazon, or you can make your own. It's a great DIY project, or a great suggestion for a handy mate to make for you. Not being authorized to deal with power tools, I went the latter route. Here are Keith's instructions: Get a piece of good quality 3/4 inch plywood (maple if you are fancy, otherwise pine). Cut it to size (bigger than your rolling pin). Sand it smooth, but don't finish it. Use Iron-on edging, which is edging with a strip of glue that you use an iron to heat to melting, then attach it to the one long and both short sides of your board (this step is optional—you'll notice in the photos that Conci doesn't have her board edged—it'll just keep fabric, etc, from catching on the rough surface of the cut wood). Make a lip by attaching 1 by pine strip to the other long edge. This will hang down below the edge of the board and serve to anchor the board in place while you are kneading and rolling your dough. I've seen boards with a second lip, this one sticking up on the other long side. That makes no sense to me, as you'd lose the ability to roll freely away from your body, the pin would slam against the wall of the lip. But people must like it for a reason. Glue and screw the lip in place (flush with the top of your board, hanging down below the bottom edge of your board), covering the screw holes with screw plugs. As an optional feature, glue a rubber mat to the bottom of the board to prevent slipping. That's it! Keith made mine in an afternoon. He kept his hero status for much longer ("my man made me a pasta board.")

People often ask me if they need a board if they have a wooden table or counter. I'd say the board is still preferable, particularly since tables and counters are finished with a coating that gets in the way of pressing the precious pockets into the pasta.

Now that you have all your equipment ready, you can begin!

1) Crack three fresh eggs into a bowl. If you have made pasta before, you’ll furrow your brow at the bowl. What, no well in the flour? I know, I know, Mario and his amici have insisted on that pile of flour with eggs stirred into it. I, for one, am happy to abandon this method because inevitably my “volcano” springs a leak, and I’m left racing to catch the flour egg before it splatters my floor Jackson Pollock-style. Nice to know there is no magic in the frustrating process. Ignore Mr. Molto, and use a bowl. As far as I can figure, the well is to keep you from incorporating too much flour into the egg at once, which makes the dough seize, But you have the ability to delay gratification, so I, and Conci my pasta mentor, trust you to go easy on adding the flour. A bit at a time.

2) Add a spoonful of olive oil to the eggs and beat them with a fork. I know, I know… olive oil in pasta is not done. Do it anyway.

3) Sift in the flour (with a sifter! this helps with that slow incorporation) a bit at a time, and mix it into the eggs. This is where it gets tricky, because Italian flour is not like American flour. First of all, it’s different wheat, so the gluten level is not the same; and secondly, it comes in various grinds. Some people say that the “00” or “0” refer to gluten levels, but they don’t. All Italian flour is different gluten-wise from American flour, and the “00” or “0” refers to how finely that flour is ground. Popular pasta recipes call for “00” flour, which is ground so finely it’s like talcum powder. And indeed, that seems to be the Italian’s version of all purpose flour. But for pasta, Conci uses “0”. Or really, she uses whatever flour is the best quality and the freshest. That’s more important than the grind or the gluten. You must use excellent, excellent flour. If it’s cheap, it’s no good. And doesn’t this make sense? You are making a dish that has essentially two ingredients—eggs and flour. If either of these is cut-rate, you shouldn’t even bother. So my suggestion is sure, use high quality “0” if you can get it. If you can’t, but your international food store stocks “00”, get that. If neither of these are possible for you, get the best all-purpose flour you can. You may find some recipes online that call for mixing bread flour in to approximate the gluten level of Italian flour. Personally, I wouldn’t bother, since the results seem so spurious; I wonder if the few success stories are placebo-driven.

Conci often mixes in a little bit of whole wheat flour into her pasta. Not so much that you taste it, but enough that when you look at it, you can see brown flecks, and when you eat it, it has a bit more power and heft. I preferred it the day she used the integrale flour, as it was not at all wheaty, but more toothy.

As for amounts, don’t stress. Pasta dough is like a baby—if it needs more, it will ask for more. For now, just mix in about four cups. If the flour gets stuck to the sides of the bowl and you can’t free it, you can add a little water.

4) Remove the dough onto your board, making especially sure to get every egg bit back into your dough. Scrape the dough off your fork with your fingers. The egg is precious!

5) Begin to knead. Have that sifter at the ready, as you will be flouring the board and the dough frequently. Also, keep a scraper handy, as you will need to scrape off the stuck bits from the board. Knead in the flour until you have a supple dough, turning, pushing, flouring, turning, pushing, flouring. The finished dough will be only slightly sticky.

6) Roll into a circle. Your cooking show experts will tell you to let your dough rest in the refrigerator, or on the counter, well-wrapped in plastic wrap before rolling it out. Conci doesn’t do this. I’m not sure if it’s because the gluten in our flour needs more time to relax, or if it’s a step that someone did long ago and we continue to do so because we assume that’s the way to do it. In any case, if I want to take a break at this point, I put a bowl over the dough and let it rest for a few. Otherwise, I make it like Conci.

7) Rotate the dough, flip the dough, still continually sprinkling it with sifted flour. You want to roll it to the size of a round serving platter. Make sure you scrape consistently, you want zero tackiness on your board. If there is a tiniest bit of dough stuck to the board, scrape it up. The photo is from before the dough was being rolled, but you’ll need to continue scraping throughout the process if you get any stuck bits.

8) Now comes the tricky step, both to describe and to master the technique. It will take some practice, but pasta is more patient than you think it is. Just keep flouring it, and it will hang with you until you get it. This step is all about stretching the dough evenly, so you get a circle of uniformly thin dough with the diameter of your rolling pin (which is why, in Italy, rolling pins come in various sizes, indicating either one-egg, two-egg, or three-egg pasta). Here are the steps: Place rolling pin at the top edge of dough, lift dough up and towards you, wrapping it over the rolling pin. With your palms, roll the pin towards you while you roll the pin back and forth against the palms of your hands, while simultaneously moving your hands from the middle of the pin towards the edges. It’s several motions at the same time. One, roll pin towards you, essentially creating a burrito with the pin as the filling, and the dough wrapped around the pin. Two, use short rolls (bearing in mind step one, so it’s almost a 2 steps forward, 1 step back rolling) using the palms of your hands. Three, sweep palms of your hands from the center, where you begin, to the outer edge, where you will finish.

Once you feel the dough slipping outward as you roll the pin towards yourself you know you’ve got it. Just remember to sift flour over once in awhile to prevent the dough from sticking to the board, the pin, or itself when it is rolled.

Here’s a YouTube video I found that shows this rolling process; it’s a little different than how Conci taught me, but that might be because she couldn’t explain how to do it like this. In the video, the chef’s hands move across the rolling pin constantly, back and forth. When we did it, we started at the center, and were at the ends by the end of the roll. In any case, it will give you an idea.

9) When the dough is wrapped around the pin, use the rolling pin to alternatively flip the dough over, or rotate it sideways, so it you are continuously flipping it and turning it. Once you’ve released it, roll it out the traditional way with the rolling pin, taking care to get those edges, that have a tendency to fatten, nice and evenly thin.

10.) Once the pasta is rolled, it is left to dry on the board or on a cloth. When it is more powdery to the touch than sticky, it is ready for cutting. Take your circle of pasta dough and roll the bottom up and the top down, until it looks like a folded tea towel. Drape the end of the roll over a cutting board (not your pasta board!) and slice it to desired thickness (which in Umbria, is nearly always tagliatelle). This part is the best. It is deeply satisfying to feel the bite of the pasta giving way under the knife, and seeing all those immaculate rows of pasta taking shape as you slice. After you've sliced a few inches, take the tip of your knife and slide it under the middle of the cut pasta. Move the pasta to a separate board, shaking the knife as you go so as to unfold the strands and let them fall loosely (see photos below). Once they are on your board, sprinkle with some semolina flour to keep the strands from sticking to each other. Continue slicing. If you accidentally let the sheet of pasta dry for too long and it is too brittle for slicing, then I'd suggest swapping your pasta recipe for a lasagna, so you can just cut the pasta in pan-shaped sheets. The beauty of fresh pasta for lasagna is that it doesn't need pre-boiling, which means you can put together a beautiful dish of pasta with fewer steps.

That’s it!

Pasta in my house no longer requires a Herculean effort. While I have a meat sauce burbling, I may think, "Oh! Some homemade noodles will be perfect!" Out comes my tools, flour, eggs, and 30 minutes later, the pasta is ready to boil. Simple.

Just as it should be.