Making lasagna from scratch

So I had some ragu left over in the fridge from this cook here And now it's time to put it to good use in another dish.

This will be inspired by lasgna Bolognese, however, I'm going to use a little mozzarella at the end, and exclude some butter to save on calories and fat, which the purists would cry about.

Time to assemble the ingredients.

This is going to require that I make the pasta noodles, and a Bechamel sauce, so I'll make the noodles first, let them dry a little, and then make the sauce.

For the noodles, I'm using 200g's of semolina and AP flour mixed, since I was a little short on the semolina. Instead of using the food processor, I'll be using the "fountain" method, which consists of forming a hole in a pile of flour to contain the eggs, beating the eggs in, and slowly working in the flower.

pic related: 200g's of flour ready for the eggs.

For fresh pasta, all you need is 1 egg per 100g's of flour, and they didn't even use eggs back in the day, but used water instead.

Here's 2 eggs for my 200g's of semolina, ready to be whipped.

I used a fork to break the yolks and beat them, and started to slowly work in the flour.

Once the flour is pretty much worked in, you can start to knead it by hand.

The dough is done and ready to rest.

>store bought semolina
>from scratch

Rolled out the dough and used the highest setting on my pasta machine to make a very thin noodle. Now I'm going to let them dry and start on the bechamel.

>semolina
Might want to work on your Italian culinary knowledge there because you just killed your credibility.

I liked your last thread and will be checking on this one too.

For the Bechamel I figured I'd need about 2 cups of milk, 2 oz / 4 tbs of butter, and about a half a cup of butter.

I sliced and heated up the butter and began to add the flour to make my roux.

>semolina
durum wheat flour whose main use is pasta making....

Working in the milk.

I've made this sauce using a variety of techniques, and I've found that if you just whisk the hell out of it, it'll smooth out, as will most sauces.

After adding in the milk and enough whisking, it smoothed right out nicely.

For spices I added a couple dried bay leaves, fresh ground pepper, nutmeg, and some salt. Now I'm going to let it simmer a bit.

Bechamel is ready, now it's time to boil the noodles. I've made this using both, raw and boiled, and the boiled always offers a better texture.

This is the final result

>making lasagna from scratch
not so fast
I want to see you find some wild wheat then plant it to get enough to make flour
etc.

Uh.....no.

Go shit up the sip thread instead of something with actual OC

Noodles are ready. I just boiled them, tossed them in some cold water to stop the cooking, and laid them out to dry.

The ragu is ready, and here I've lined the bottom of the pan with the ragu to help keep the noodles from sticking / burning.

Next comes a layer of noodles. I'm not going to cut them to size, but instead, just fold them over.

Add a spoon of ragu, Bechamel, and mix it around. Some just add the Bechamel right to the ragu and stir it up before adding to the lasagna. I like to have different concentrations of both spread throughout the lasagna, though.

Grating parmigiano right on top of it and mixing it together, and that completes the first layer.

Now it's just repeating the process until the pan is full or your run out of ingredients.

The amount of ingredients you use is up to you, but the Italian approach has always been to make the noodles the focus, and they don't use nearly as much sauce and cheese as non-Italians.

Some recipes call for adding butter and olive oil to each layer as you go, however, I don't want the extra calories, so will not be using that approach.

I had enough ragu for 4 layers, so I stopped there.

In this final layer, I'm adding some mozzarella cheese along with the parmigiano, though that's not usually done in most Italian versions. I just enjoy the baked mozz.

From here it goes in the oven at 375, and will cook until the top gets some decent color.

Done.

Looks damn good. When it cools give us a side shot.

Out of basil, so I garnished with some parsely.

Make sure to let your lasagna rest before cutting into it, so it can cool down and maintain its shape.

This is why nobody does this shit anymore...

How does a rolling pin work for this? Any special technique?

It doesn't look super tasty but I'm sure it is.

Man, lasagna is like the perfect food.

And for your next dish?

>How does a rolling pin work for this? Any special technique?

A rolling pin works fine, though it's time consuming. Harder to get those thin noodles, which I really enjoy in a lasagna as they offer a very different texture to the thicker ones normally used.

I'm thinking either a chicken and andoille gumbo, or a smoked chicken and collard green soup.

If u post on how u do it I will read with interest. Great lasagna btw. Im going to try cooking one

good job OP

Enjoyed reading. Nice work.

Looks amazing, would eat