Purposes.

The general idea of this blog relates to something I read in cooking by hand, by Paul Bertolli.  He keeps a detailed notebook on the various characteristics of heirloom tomatoes, flavor, uses, ability to be turned in to sauce, whatnot. 

I have been keeping a paper journal of some basic notations of my pasta making thus far. It is pretty basic stuff, such as

03.18.09 Pasta dough unacceptable. Did not form as desired.

So while that is pretty much what this is, I intend to go more in depth, and do some analysis. Well as much analysis as I can, what I will call analysis will nominally be more in the form of vague generalizations as I come to grasp the nuance of pasta making. The writing will be pretty dry, because I intend to use this not only as a kind of interesting public project, but also because well this is my journal about pasta making, in a form that I hope will last a little longer than my now well beaten collegiate notebook.

On Background:

The idea of making pasta was something I had jokingly entertained for a while before I began working at my current place of employment, owned and ran by two wonderful people. I had asked rather genuinely when I started working there, "When do I get to learn how to make pasta?"

The response was a polite refusal.

The seed was planted however, and after what I would term as harassment, I was given my first lessons, and the results were, well lets lean towards interesting. I have a background in working with dough, being a pizza maker, and this was astronomically difficult compared to that. Anyways that is how my obsession with making pasta began. and all the story I feel like writing at the moment.