Lasagna pasta, made at home with only flour, egg, and salt. I recommend slightly boiling the fresh pasta prepared for lasagna for a few minutes in boiling water before using it for your lasagnas or cannelloni. Yes, because with the same pasta you can prepare delicious cannelloni.
Lately, it is also very convenient for me to buy the pre-made lasagna sheets, especially because you can place them directly in the pan and still get a good result. However, the taste and texture of the homemade sheet, slightly boiled in boiling water, cannot be replicated with packaged products.
The memory of my mom making the sheet is perhaps one of the first memories of my childhood and was a real celebration.
Making lasagna sheets at home is not at all a lengthy task, you can knead the dough by hand or with a stand mixer and use it immediately without resting time.
To roll out the sheet, I suggest using the “nonna papera,” a manual machine perfect for rolling sheets, ideal to keep in the kitchen. This helps you achieve a perfectly sized sheet. Passing the dough through the “nonna papera” also helps knead it better. Each pass, first with the rollers at the maximum setting and then gradually thinner, makes the dough smoother and more compact.
While preparing the sheets to the desired thickness, for lasagna, I use the thinnest setting, I recommend bringing salted water to a boil.
Once the water boils, it will be enough to throw in a few sheets at a time, boil them for a minute, and take them out to dry on a towel. Really, between kneading and cooking, it will take no more than about 40 minutes.
With this recipe, you get about 1.1 lbs of lasagna pasta, and with the thickness I use, it’s enough to prepare lasagna for 8/10 people.
For those who love kneading at home, I also remind
- Difficulty: Very Easy
- Cost: Very Cheap
- Preparation time: 35 Minutes
- Cooking methods: Stove
- Cuisine: Italian
- Energy 150.06 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 26.12 (g) of which sugars 0.84 (g)
- Proteins 6.99 (g)
- Fat 2.34 (g) of which saturated 0.82 (g)of which unsaturated 1.00 (g)
- Fibers 1.57 (g)
- Sodium 330.52 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 62 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients
The ingredients to make this pasta are only two, and with these doses, you will get about 500g of sheets
- 3 eggs (whole)
- 1.75 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup semolina flour (or all-purpose flour)
- 1 pinch salt
- 6.3 cups water
- 1 tsp coarse salt
Tools
If you don’t want to knead by hand, I recommend using a stand mixer with a hook for hard doughs. Another very important tool for obtaining a compact and thin sheet, even for those not used to kneading, is certainly the “nonna papera” or pasta machine.
- 1 Hand Whisk
- 1 Pasta Machine
Preparation
Making lasagna pasta is not difficult at all, it just requires a little attention to the steps.
To make great lasagnas or cannelloni, my advice is to blanch the handmade sheet in a pot containing 1.5 liters of water and 4 grams of coarse salt.
If you want to ease the kneading, you can use a stand mixer with a hook for hard doughs, put flour, eggs, and salt in the bowl, and start at low speed until the dough forms.
If you’re kneading by hand, place the flours on the work surface, create a well in the center with your hand, and pour the eggs and salt into it.
With circular movements, helping with a fork or hand whisk, gradually absorb the flour into the eggs, then continue to knead with your hands to obtain a dough ball. The obtained dough can be used immediately without resting time.
With the help of a knife or a scraper, divide the dough into 4 or 5 pieces. Pass each piece through the pasta machine, setting the wheel to the maximum thickness because the first passes will be the most “difficult” to then obtain the sheet. Lightly flour each piece of dough before passing it through the rollers and press it with your palm before placing it in the rollers, this will ease the first passes.
Pass the same piece several times until you obtain thick but compact sheets.
After creating all your sheets at the maximum thickness, you need to re-pass them at the thickness you prefer for your lasagnas. Normally for lasagna, they are passed to the thinnest thickness, but the next one is also fine. It depends on personal tastes. If you want to skip cooking the pasta, you need to pass them to the thinnest layer and dress them with rather soft condiments.
When you have re-passed all your sheets to the preferred thickness, cut them with a pizza cutter or a knife into rectangles at least 4 inches high. This obtained sheet can be kept in the refrigerator for 2 or 3 days as long as you keep it covered with plastic wrap to prevent it from drying out.
As mentioned earlier, while preparing the sheets, I recommend bringing the water to a boil with the coarse salt and when the water boils, start cooking the pasta. Drop a few pieces of pasta at a time into the boiling water, max 8 pieces, and cook them for about 1 minute. Remove the pasta from the water using a slotted spoon to drain the water and a fork. Immediately place the boiled sheet in a container with cold water as you see in the photo.
This step in cold water will stop the pasta’s cooking and prevent the sheets from sticking to each other.
After the cold water bath, place the sheet pieces to dry on a table covered with a cotton towel to absorb the water. Try not to overlap the various pieces to avoid sticking. Your sheet is ready and also cooked to be used.
NOTES
The sheet keeps well for 2 or 3 days in the refrigerator, both raw and cooked, to be used when needed, allowing you to prepare it conveniently. The important thing is to keep it covered with plastic wrap and, if possible, separate each layer with parchment paper.
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