at Thu, 17 Aug 2006 16:24:29 GMT in >,
q (Andy) wrote :

>Bob Myers, after taking an infinite amount of time, finally, on 17 Aug
>2006, typed out:
>
>> This stuff will all be old news to the more experienced
>> cooks in the audience, but it sure looks like you're aiming at
>> a mostly-newbie sort of cook with this one.
>>
>Bob M.,
>
>Allow me to add more old news for newbies. Regardless of the dough yield
>and regardless of the roller being manual or electric, dividing into 6
>pieces yields unwieldly lengths of flat rolled pasta, before passing
>through the cutter. Especially with a hand cranked rolling machine,
>unless you have helping hands.

Part of this, it seems, is because of the width of commonly available
machines. Most pasta machines seem to have very narrow openings. Why aren't
machines made that are, say, 50 cm wide? Yeah, that does take up some
counter space but safe to say that for the time you're making pasta there
isn't going to be much else being done on the counter anyway. Wider sheets
also speed up the cutting process, especially valuable if you are in a low-
humidity environment.

Lack of practical size is one of the main reasons I've never considered
getting a pasta machine. It's easier to roll the dough out by hand on a
large countertop or a board. Then one can create wide, long sheets that are
easily handled. One thing about the manual process - for cutting most
shapes I find it easiest to roll the sheet into a log. Wouldn't that be
easy enough to integrate into a machine, too - something like a set of wide
jaws with blades? Then you wouldn't have to feed the sheets into the
cutters.

--
Alex Rast

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