Homemade Roasted Garlic Spaghetti

After my successful experiment with homemade linguine noodles over the weekend, I decided to make some spaghetti. Over the years, I’ve learned to experiment incrementally to see what my flavor limitations are. Like with bread, pasta is 95% flour. That means that you’d have to add a lot of another ingredient to be able to taste it. I thought I’d roast some garlic and mix it with some olive oil in lieu of an egg in the basic dough recipe. I figured even if we couldn’t taste the garlic, the noodles would be healthier.

Here’s everything you need:

Roasted Garlic Spaghetti

• 2½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 head garlic, roasted and mashed
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• water, as needed

We roast a lot of garlic in my house. Whether its for hummus or garlic butter, it’s an easy and healthy way to add a smoky taste to a dish. All you have to do is scalp the head to expose the cloves, drizzle it with a little salt and olive oil, and roast it in a foil pouch at 400° for about 30 minutes. It’s done when the cloves are soft and golden brown.

When it’s cool, you squeeze the cloves out of the bulb.

Next, use the side of your knife to mash the garlic into a paste.

Just like last time, you make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients.

Mix it all until it holds together (it may need more water or flour), knead it a couple dozen times, and let it rest under a wet rag for about fifteen minutes.

Press it until it’s the desired thickness. On my machine, I dial it down to the third setting.

Finally, you pass it through the cutter. My pasta press makes angel hair pasta.

Toss the spaghetti with flour so it doesn’t stick together. Let it cool in the fridge until the salted water is boiling rapidly. Cook the noodles for a few moinutes until they’re al dente and toss them with a sauce. I just quickly roasted some shallots, garlic and cherry tomatoes in a sherry reduction and tossed it with some fresh herbs from the garden, some finely grated parmesan cheese, and my homemade spaghetti.

It came out pretty good, but the wife and I agreed that we couldn’t really taste the roasted garlic in the noodles. Sometimes we thought we did, but we weren’t sure if we were just imagining it. Next time I’ll double the amount of garlic. If I still can’t taste it, I’ll just stick with the basic egg noodle recipe.

We froze about a third of the dough. I think we’ll play around with some free-form pastas next.