G vs. GF - Pasta

I've made fresh pasta a few times and am getting past the novelty of coming up with something passable. I want to come up with a product that I can be proud to serve.

Time to start with the basics: Making regular old simple wheat pasta, and then once I have a reference point, run the crazy circus of gluten free (GF) flours and gums to compare taste, texture, and density, as well as the actual process itself.

Here is how it went down.

Ingredients

Nothing extreme here, just flour, eggs, water, and in the case of the gluten free dough, xanthan gum.
In both cases, I used a pretty simple and common ratio (by weight): 10 parts flour, 4-5 parts liquid (3-4 parts egg, and 1 part water).

For the gluten pasta (G), I used regular all purpose flour, crappy store bought eggs, and tap water.

For the gluten free (GF) pasta I used "Namaste Foods Perfect Flour Blend" which is a pretty common mix of gluten free flours and xanthan gum. I also added an extra tablespoon of xanthan gum. Gums are necessary in GF baking since they attempt to fill the role of gluten which without going into detail (thanks Alton), gives the dough some strength, ability to stretch as well as enables it to rise.

For the GF dough, I used the same crappy store bought eggs (one extra egg used) and tap water.

For the rest of this post, the format is pretty simple: wheat (G) pasta on the left, gluten free (GF) on the right:

Process

Taking pics while mixing and kneading dough by hand sucks! So there are none. I try to explain the process here  but it doesn't change for G vs. GF. Learn how to do it by hand because for kicks, but know that you can also just toss the ingredients in a food processor for a half dozen or so pulses. Onto the pics.

After kneading the dough, I made dough balls and stored each in a plastic container for an hour at room temp to allow the moisture to redistribute uniformly (in theory) throughout the dough.

You can see despite the extra egg in the GF version, the G version on the left is more moist, and closer in colour to egg yolk. Being dryer, the GF version was more fragile, and harder to work with but I am a little hesitant to add more egg as doing so really alters to texture and density.

After another short round of kneading it was time to roll it out. You can see I managed to get the G version on the left much thinner than the GF on the right (used a wine bottle). Even when using gums etc. GF dough is much more fragile and doesn't roll out well so I had to pancake it by hand.

I'm not sure if its visible from the pics, but the GF dough formed fissures along the edges, which weren't apparent in the G dough.




It was much easier to cut the G version. The added strength allows you to roll it up without cracking, and cut it like a log (left pic) as opposed to right where the dough is so fragile and prone to tearing that you are essentially cutting it as thin as possible with as little contact as possible.





Taste/Texture/Density

Hard to compare the density between the two pastas since I manage to get the G dough on the left, much thinner than the GF dough on the right but both passed my al dente test.

In terms of taste, it was like comparing white pasta to whole wheat. The white was simpler, and allowed the mild salty flavour of the butter to shine but there was a certain satisfying "whole grain-y" thing going on with the GF. My only complained with the GF is that it also had a starchy taste.


Recommendations for next time

In terms of the process, I will continue to explore gluten free flours, blends, and try out different gums to see if I can mimic the strong, stretchy wheat version that was a pleasure to work with. Some more water added to the GF dough might also be benificial.

I would also like to look into acquiring a proper rolling pin. Using a wine bottle is a cool party trick but lacks the handle that allows you to really work to dough outwards, instead of just down. I saw a vid of someone rolling out GF dough with a marble rolling pin and board combination that I want to try; the dough slid effortlessly off the low stick marble surface meaning you don't have to handle it as much which means less tearing.

In terms of taste, both were a little more present on the pallet than I would have liked. I attribute this to the dough being too thick when it was cut. Hopefully a rolling pin solves this. As I also mentioned the GF pasta was a little too present to really mix well with delicate flavours, but some acid from lemon or balsamico would perhaps cut the contrast a little as well as clean up some of that starchy taste.

-m