Dough

People can never seem to get enough pizza, and how many a pizza will serve depends on the heartiness of the toppings, the thickness of the crust, and whether you’re serving anything along with it. But I’ve found generally that this dough recipe will make two twelve- or thirteen-inch pizzas and that pizzas made with the following toppings will serve at least four people.

A pastry suitable for any pie, though for desserts I would go with the Sweet Tart Pastry on page 654. Here you can use olive oil in place of butter, with quite good results. The keys to easy success: use a food processor and chill the dough before rolling it out.

A richer, sweeter pastry than that used for most American pies (though it can be employed successfully for same). The food processor makes quick work of it, and if you chill the dough before rolling, you should have little trouble handling it, even on your first try.

An all-purpose wrapper, useful for many of the recipes on the following pages: dumplings, pot stickers, wontons, and so on. Of course you can buy these, ready made, at any supermarket, but they are fun and pretty easy to make—a good afternoon project and one kids will like. Note that the wrappers are made in stages, with a resting period in between; this period can be extended up to a day if you wrap the dough ball in plastic and refrigerate—just be sure to let it come to room temperature once again before proceeding.

Whether the noodle and wrappers made from its dough moved west from China or east from Italy is anyone’s guess, but it wound up everywhere. There is barely a square mile of turf between Mongolia and Hungary that doesn’t boast some kind of dumpling, and the variety is staggering. (And, if you consider the ravioli and empanada dumplings, they are universal.) But though shape and filling vary wildly, the doughs are pretty much the same throughout the world: they’re made either with egg or without. These are mostly made with, making the dough essentially the same as that used for fresh pasta.

Cannelloni—that delicious stuffed pasta, literally translated as “big reeds”—is always a sign of a festive occasion in Italy. This baked dish can be made in advance and serve a large group of people, and it is loved by most. What you stuff it with almost does not matter, although a meat-and-vegetable combination is the most common choice. Cannelloni was a big-hit item on menus of Italian American restaurants in the sixties and seventies. If you have a gathering of family and friends, as Italians often do, this is a good dish to make.

The most important element in making pizza or calzones is the dough. In this recipe, I give you instructions for making it all in one day. But usually I like to let my dough rise slowly in the refrigerator overnight: it develops much more complexity and flavor. This dough is good for calzones and focaccia as well.

For extra-tender pastry, cut in half of the shortening until the mixture is like cornmeal; then cut in the remaining shortening until it is like small peas.

This dough is one I use for both the apricot and chocolate tarts given above and other dessert tarts formed in a shallow tart mold. It has a delicate, cookie-crumb texture (with lightness from the baking powder) and great buttery taste. And it takes no time to make in the food processor. This recipe gives you just the right amount of dough to form into a 9-inch tart shell—multiply the formula if you are making a larger tart.

This soft dough is a pleasure to knead on the table. You could mix it in a food processor, but since it only requires 3 or 4 minutes of kneading, and feels so good, I prefer to do it by hand.

Spinach pasta is essential to Pasticciata Bolognese (page 200), but you can enjoy it in all the cuts and shapes of fresh pasta. It is best to start prepping the spinach well ahead of time, as detailed in the recipe, for the best texture. You can always freeze the dough until you need it. Spinach pasta is usually more moist than other fresh pastas and so will cook more quickly.

These three pasta doughs look almost identical on paper all purpose flour, eggs, olive oil, water. So you may wonder: How do I know which one to make? Which is the best? The truth is, I’d love to have you make all three so you can see and feel and taste the big differences that result from small variations. And you will realize there is no single “best.” As Italian cooks know, you can mix flour into a fine pasta dough with whatever eggoil water mixture you like, whatever is available in the pantry, or whatever you can afford. This last factor in particular reflects the way pasta has fit into Italian life for centuries: The rich man can have his cook make pasta moistened entirely with fat-laden, tasty egg yolks. A poor family might make their Sunday pasta with one precious egg (and have weekday pasta mixed only with water and a bit of oil). And families in between make pasta with the ingredients they have. But don’t be fooled. The richest is not necessarily best. With two eggs and a goodly amount of extra-virgin olive oil, Poor Man’s Pasta is quite rich and delicious (frankly, it’s my favorite). Part of the fun is in mixing and matching the right pasta with the most compatible sauce, and you’ll find guidance in the pages ahead as well as the challenge to try your own pairings.

Thick and chewy, with the nuttiness of whole wheat, bigoli is the signature pasta of the Veneto. At Ristorante Celeste in Venegazzu, outside of Treviso, Giuliano Tonon taught me how to extrude fresh dough into strands with a torchio, the traditional hand press. But bigoli is not only a restaurant treat—most home cooks in the region have a torchio in the kitchen and make bigoli every week! Happily, this pleasure is now available to Americans since I have found a genuine torchio for sale on the Internet (see Sources, page 340). Bigoli can also be made with an electric pasta-extruder or a meat grinder. The two traditional sauces on the following pages are packed with flavor. With homemade bigoli, they each make a big, gutsy pasta, very worth the effort and very Venetian. (And if you can’t make your own bigoli, whole wheat spaghetti will be delicious with either sauce.)

Make a whole batch of this pasta dough for Fresh Pasta Quills with Chicken Sauce, page 16; Roast Goose with Mlinzi, page 28; or Pasutice with Seafood Sauce, page 18. Roll, cut, and shape the pasta as detailed below, and use in whichever dish you are preparing.

Toasted pecans give this crust a little bit of crunch and a lot of superrich, buttery flavor.

This lightly sweetened, eggy dough makes a deliciously buttery, shortbreadlike crust. It’s made in the food processor, so it’s important to go light on the pulsing and feel the dough with your fingers to make sure it isn’t getting overmixed.