Learning how to make basic pasta dough is a skill I highly recommend having. It can immensely boost the quality of pasta dishes you make at home, and prep you for other dough and wrapper recipes too. Luckily, it's not too hard!
Combine ingredients. Add everything into a food processor and pulse for about 15-20 seconds until a ball starts to form and picks up all the dough. If doing this without a processor, pour flour onto a cutting board and make a well in the center, pour the eggs and salt in the center and slowly start to incorporate flour into the egg until you've gotten it all.
Knead. Take the formed ball of dough and press the heel of your hand into it. Partially fold the dough back onto itself, rotate a bit, then repeat. This strengthens the dough and develops gluten. Do this for a few minutes until it gets firmer. You may need to regulate the moisture level by adding more flour or spritzing or adding drops of water. The target consistency is one that isn't gooey or stickey--we want it firm but still slightly tacky.
Rest the dough. Form it into a ball, cover in plastic wrap and rest on the counter or fridge for 30-60 minutes.
Laminate the dough. Unwrap plastic wrap and plit the dough into thirds and work with one at a time. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin until its a rectangle about 1/4" thick or slightly thinner, thin enough so you can fold as if it’s a letter being inserted into an envelope. Then run it through the machine on a 0 setting and crank (see photos in the post). Add flour as you need knead and roll out the dough so it doesn't stick to the machine.Repeat this entire process of rolling, folding, and cranking through the machine on a 0 setting about 6-8 times until the dough looks smooth and not rippley.Turn the knob on the machine to a 1 setting, and repeat the above, and continue until you reach the thinness you like. I like around 5 for the taglioni cut on this machine, and around a 7 for the fettuccine cut.
Split the dough. At this point you'll have one long sheet of dough. Cut the sheet with a bench scraper to the lengh you'd like in your final pasta strands.
Cut the pasta. Move the crank handle from the laminating side of the machine to the cutting side--either the taglioni or fettuccine. Sprinkle some flour on the sheet before cutting if needed to prevent the pasta from sticking to the machine.
Catch the pasta as it comes out of the machine, and immediately separate the strands, dusting it lightly with flour before spreading or forming nests on a sheet pan or cutting board.
Repeat. You have 2 more pasta balls to repeat the above steps with to finish out the dough!
Cook. Get a medium sized pot filled with roughly 3-4 inches of water and get it to a boil on high heat. Add enough salt so it tastes like the sea--usually more salt than you'd think. Boil pasta in single bowl sized servings at a time so it doesn't crowd the pot and it lets the pasta cook more evenly. This pasta cooks much faster than typical dried boxed pasta, taking somewhere between 1 and 2 minutes. Test the pasta by taking bites every 20 seconds until it reaches desired doneness, remove with a strainer and repeat!