May 6, 2016 - 11:37am
Sourdough kamut pasta falling apart
I made sourdough pasta last night using 100% Kamut flour. Approximate ingredient amounts were 3 cups whole grain Kamut, 3 eggs, 1 cups sourdough culture. Mixed together and allowed it to rise for 8 hours. I then used a pasta machine to "knead" the dough and roll it out to appropriate thickness. It rolled out fine. I cooked it in boiling, salted water for 3-5 minutes. After it had cooked I tossed it with some wild greens and it fell apart into small pieces. Should I increase the egg or is there other suggestions for using a whole, ancient grain flour for sourdough pasta. I've made pasta plenty of times using white flour, but this is a first with an ancient grain.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
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but I did take a cooking class in Tuscany where we made pasta a couple of times. So that being said, I have never seen a recipe for pasta where the dough is allowed to rise nor is any leavening ever used. The basic recipe from my cooking class included type 00 flour, durum semolina flour, eggs and olive oil. Your recipe sounds very unusual.
hydration. Normal pasta is made with durum semolina and Kamut is as close as you can get, being a natural durum hybrid so the Kamut isn't the problem. But there could be a couple fo other areas to look at that could be the problem. I'm calculating that the 3 eggs have 100 g of water in them and the cup of starter 120 g of water in jt for a total of 220 g of water and 390 g of Whole Kamut for a hydration of 56% which sounds about right for whole grain pasta when regular semolina pasta is 50% hydration. This all depends on my guesses for water in your eggs and starter but I don't think that is the problem.
I think the problem is is the 8 hour ferment. Once you knead the dough until smooth, let it rest and ferment for no mote than 45 minutes, then put it through he rollers. That should solve your problem. SD pasta isn't meant to rise and ferment. It is there just for flavor. It sounds very close to my recipe except for the 8 hours of ferment. I use 58% hydration for whole grain pasta
I think your problem may be a lack of kneading as well as the long fermentation. When making pasta out of fresh ground Durum and eggs I knead for several minutes until the dough becomes noticeably smoother and more elastic sometimes it takes 10-15 min. Then it is rested for at least 30 min before rolling with a machine. I don't think you can rely on the pasta machine to do the kneading the gluten will not developed properly especially with whole grain and lack of strength may be why it is falling apart. I don't know what the hydration is because it is done by feel the type of egg and humidity are changeable. Once you learn how the dough should feel it is easy to repeat just like bread dough.
Good luck
Thank you for all the helpful thoughts. After some more experimenting I think the primary problem ended up being the dough required much more kneading and my grain was ground a bit too coarse. My grinder (nutrimill) has a hard time grinding the Kamut real finely, so I'm going to be switching to preground flour, at least for my customers.
Now I just need to figure out the best way to dry the pasta so it looks nice for customers. I tried hanging it, but it was time consuming to get all the pasta the exact same length. When I dried it in small nest about 3/4 of it stuck to itself. The whole grain Kamut makes a rather fragile pasta, so it's easy to break when drying or once dried and it's too thin.