CucinaPro 177 Pasta Fresh Pasta Machine

1. The thin noodle (tagliatellini) attachment will produce spaghetti-like thin noodles. But you need to dry the pasta sheets somewhat before you cut them. Otherwise they stick together and you will be saying nasty words in your kitchen.

2. You don't wash this thing. Flour and water equals paste and cement. So resist this bad idea. Just brush the thing out with a stiff pastry brush.

3. The pasta dough is best left to rest for 20 minutes, at least, under a damp tea towel. This allows the gluten in the flour to relax enough for you to roll it out. If you are impatient and neglect this step, you may think the pasta maker is having a tough time rolling the dough, but it is not--you have to allow the dough time to relax.

4. You go through the thickness settings from widest to narrowest, rolling out the dough and folding it into thirds, then re-rolling. If the dough piece gets unwieldy and way too long, just cut it in half, then process the halves separately. It means shorter noodles, but a lot easier handling for you.

5. Unless you really insist, you don't have to use semolina flour. In fact, this flour is often grainy and produces a less smooth result at home. I use bread flour. It's fine. And if you don't want egg yolk, just add egg whites, or those imitation eggs that are mostly egg white. Works fine.

6. If you want spinach or carrot or beet pasta, you can buy powdered vegetables that have been freeze-dried and sprayed to a fine consistency. This is an easy way to add color and flavor, without having to squeeze out pots of spinach into a nasty mess. Commercial cooking catalogs from baking and gourmet supply companies often sell these powders.

7. The home-made pasta is brittle, so really, making extra and storing it is less successful than making it fresh. The Villageware machine is so easy to use, however, once you get the knack, that you may find, as I do, that it is easier just to whip up a fresh batch than to try to process extra and store it.

ONE more hint--and it's why this is four and not five stars: the clamp has about a 2 to 2.5 inch clearance to attach to your counter. Your counters may be quite a bit thicker. So it can be hard to figure out where to mount the machine. Sometimes a kitchen table will do instead of the kitchen counter. Or you can drill a cut out under the lip of the counter for the clamp. If you are clever, it won't be visible.


Takes some practice but it's all worth it!   August 7, 2001
89 out of 90 found this review helpful

I don't know why I decided I wanted this pasta maker, but sometime last December, I did, and I asked my mother for it for Christmas. And I'm sure glad she bought it because this pasta maker rocks! It's a little tricky to get the hang of at first, and it helps to get the dough just right (my first batch had too much flour and wouldn't roll out). A touch of olive oil seems to help.

Once the dough is ready, rolling it out is a snap. The first few passes through the machine are the trickiest, and it helps if someone holds the machine down (especially if you can't clamp it down, like me). The best thing about using the machine is that it works the pasta as it rolls it (you should send it through the highest setting several times and fold the resulting strip back into itself, in thirds, then roll it again), so even if your dough starts out sub-par, by the time you reach the second-lowest setting, it looks professional. (I don't recommend the lowest setting, it rolls too thin and the dough begins to tear.)

It comes with two cutting attachments, one which produces thin angel-hair/spaghetti-like noodles, and a thicker one which is closer to linguini. Both produce delicious pasta. If you're looking to make pasta from scratch, I highly recommend this pasta maker. I've never been disappointed by the results.


Lots of fun. Well built.   July 6, 2000
Eric Antonow (Palo Alto, CA United States)
131 out of 136 found this review helpful

I've had mine for about 5 years and through about 3 cycles of enthusiasm. It is relatively easy to use but does require some patience and testing. What is the 'right' thickness for your pastas? Depends on how you prepare the dough (amt of water, eggs -- if any). Also, it is also critical to set up a drying rack of some sort. I ended up with about 10 dowel rods that I had to hang from the ceiling. There are drying racks on the market but I have not been impressed by their construction. Next best alternative it to temporarily lay out the pasta on wax paper as you work -- make lots of room.

All that was for perspective on the logistics, but otherwise I have to say this is an easy way to make yourself feel like a gourmet. The taste is unlike anything you'll get at the store -- notably better than pre-packaged fresh. And yes, friends will be impressed. Solid construction -- I promise you won't need to buy a second one. A great book to go with is 'The Pasta Bible' -- one of the few books with dough recipies as well as sauces.


good entry level pasta machine, great fun!   May 14, 2006
Joshua M. Kuo (Nevada, USA)
63 out of 63 found this review helpful

I bought this pasta machine 6 months ago, and I've used it at least once or twice a month ever since. I also bought one for my mother and taught her how to use it. This machine really just replaces a rolling pin and a big knife for cutting noodles (how my mom has been making hers).

A lot of people think fresh pasta is better than dried pasta... I disagree. They are just different types of pasta. Dried pasta give you a firmer bite, while fresh pastas are softer. Keep that in mind when you cook. Also, don't be limited to pasta making. I think of it as a better rolling pin, so I also use it to crank out wonton skins.

You should dry your pasta sheet a little before attempting to cut it, especially if you are going to cut them thin (like angel hair), so they don't stick to each other and form a lump. I usually catch the cut noodles in a bowl and mix more flour in to keep them from sticking to each other. You should let the noodles dry out a little bit more before cooking it.

A few words about making the dough: it will take you a while to get a feel of how firm your dough needs to be, to go through the machine smoothly. If the dough is too wet, it will stick to the machine; if it's too dry, your pasta sheet will break. But once you got it down, you can crank out noodles pretty fast. The key is you need to let the dough rest for about 30 minutes, so the flour can fully absorb the moisture.

I took the tip from Alton Brown (Good Eats), and set it up on a ironing board for my mother. This is genius! It's so much easier using an ironing board than trying to do this on a kitchen counter! And you can move it to other places if your kitchen is small.

Many people may complain about the inconvenience of the machine, because it really is easier to have two people working on it (one feeds pasta sheet in, one cranks the handle and guides the sheet coming out). But I make it into a fun little social event, my wife and I have a lot of fun making noodles together, and we have friends over to make noodles together too. It makes eating them later a lot more enjoyable too.

This machine is a little tricky to clean, I usually let it dry out a little, then use a brush (I use an old pastry brush) to clean it. There are lot of places where pasta pieces could get stuck, makes you wonder why they didn't improve the design. I also use a toothpick to clean the noodle cutting attachment. Don't bother with water, it only makes it harder to clean (flour + water = sticky goo on your pasta machine).

Pros:
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- Cheap
- Many attachments available (I like the angel hair one, makes great Asian noodles)
- A lot of fun to use (great to get family and friends involved)
- Much easier than rolling pin
- Stainless steel is nearly indestructable
- Fresh noodles taste great!

Cons:
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- Heavy, might be a problem to some people (like my mom)
- Requires minimal assembly. Again, it's very easy, but my mother and my aunt both have problems getting it right.
(The above two issues are solved by permanetly mounting the machine to an old ironing board)
- Can be tricky to clean
- Not as easy to operate with one person
- Even the thickest setting is still kind of thin, so you may need to press on your dough a little before running it through. I usually use a rolling pint (or empty wine bottle) to roughly roll the dough just so it's thin enough to be fed to the machine. This is troublesome... I wish they made the openings thicker.
- Takes a while to get the right dough consistency to put through the machine

Watch outs:
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- Make sure you clean it thoroughly the first time! Make a test dough, and run it through the machine multiple times. You will get little shreds of metal (I think they are metal), but according to the manual, this is normal. In fact, I had to run two doughs through to really clean it.
- Don't wash it! Other than that it might rust (I don't know because I haven't actually seen it rust), it just makes it harder to clean. Drying it out completely then brush off the pieces is probably the best way to go.

Tips:
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- Try open ravioli, it's very simple with this machine
- If you made thin angel hair-type noodles, and you are planning to serve it in hot soup (like some Asian noodle soup), I found out that I don't even need to cook the noodles. I just pour the piping hot soup over the thin angel hair noodles, and they are cooked to perfection! I made a ginger-chicken noodle soup, and placed a small bunch of fresh noodles in each bowl, and pour the boiling hot soup over the noodles in front of the guests, it's a great WOW factor.
- I was hoping to get a fettucini attachment, but for some reason I was unable to get it from Amazon (they told me the part is no longer available). After looking at the width (6.5mm), I decided that I can just use a knife to cut it into the width I want.
- Use a toothpick to clean the hard-to-reach parts
- If your surface is too thin (as in an ironing board), you might need something to "pad" it. I used a stack of old business cards.
- I use the rack from my oven to dry pasta, although I am thinking about getting a Norpro drying rack.


Fun Kitchen tool, but design could be improved   May 28, 2002
35 out of 35 found this review helpful

I just received this pasta machine as a belated birthday gift from my in laws, and had a fun day trying it out for the first time this past weekend. After some initial work getting the machine all cleaned up and ready for use (read the instructions--you need to waste some pasta dough before the machine will be clean enough for making food) I was at it. The machine worked great for rolling out thin sheets of pasta, but somewhat less well for cutting the pasta. I learned after a few failed attempts to cut my sheets into fettucini that my cutter attachment had a manufacturing error--a spring in the mechanism was set incorrectly. I went in and fixed the spring and then the cutter worked fine. Really, once you have the sheets if you really want linguini or fettucini, it's probably just as easy (or easier) to lay the sheets on a cutting board and cut the thin strips out with a knife. The real problems came after I used the machine. This is not all that easy to clean. If you get pasta dough in the rollor mechanism it can be pretty difficult to get it out, the cutters can be even worse. Once I finnaly got it clean I left it in my dish rack to dry (don't do this) and found out later that the rollers had started to rust. It seems to me that The manufacturer could have easily made the entire machine out of a better quality stainless steel that would be less likely to start rusting so quickly. Anyway, I've learned my lesson, I cleaned up the rust, applied a little olive oil to the rollers to prevent them from rusting again, and next time I'll make sure to dry the machine thouroughly before walking away. In all it's a great machine for rolling ouyt pasta, and I'm sure I'll continue to use it and enjoy it, but it could be easier to take care of.