Fresh Pasta at Home

The most methodical and beginner-friendly fresh pasta cookbook available, built on America’s Test Kitchen’s signature approach of testing every variable until the recipe is foolproof. This book covers ten different doughs, twenty shapes, and over 100 recipes, giving you a complete education in pasta making whether you use a hand-crank machine, an electric extruder, or nothing more than a rolling pin.

Why Start Here

Most pasta cookbooks are written by restaurant chefs who learned through years of apprenticeship and assume you have that same intuitive feel for dough. America’s Test Kitchen assumes nothing. They tested egg ratios, flour types, hydration levels, and resting times obsessively so you do not have to. The result is dough recipes that work the first time and clear explanations of why each step matters.

The book opens with four foundational doughs: egg, semolina, whole-wheat, and a gluten-free option made with brown rice flour. From there it teaches you to form twenty different shapes, from familiar tagliatelle and fettuccine to hand-shaped orecchiette and filled agnolotti. Each shape comes with step-by-step photos that show you exactly what the pasta should look like at every stage.

What sets this apart from other pasta books is the troubleshooting mindset. If your dough tears, they explain why. If your ravioli leak during cooking, they tell you how to seal them properly. This is the book that turns pasta making from a stressful experiment into a reliable skill.

What to Expect

A well-organized 272-page paperback with full-color photography throughout. The first section covers equipment, ingredients, and dough fundamentals before moving into shapes and recipes. The recipes range from simple weeknight pasta with sauce to ambitious weekend projects like layered lasagna and delicate stuffed pastas. You can start with a basic egg dough and a rolling pin on day one and gradually expand your skills from there.