Ravioli Redux

A week or so ago I made a batch of mushroom ravioli that was delicious. Kevin and I have talked about how good they were ever since. I decided to make another batch last night. But sometimes you can't re-create the magic.

Even though I used the exact same recipe for the dough, last night's version was way too sticky. I think I should have added more flour from the start, but thought that things would improve after the dough rested for a while.

Thinking about what went wrong today, I wondered if the weather was at fault. When I made pasta last week it was cool, but very humid. Yesterday was dry and hot. But doesn't that mean that last week's flour should have had more moisture in it to start. Wouldn't that translate to wetter dough? But in actuality it was much drier then what I made last night.

In addition to the dough being sticky, it wasn't rolling out the same width as last week. One of the things that made the last batch so great is that I used a biscuit cutter to make perfectly sized raviolis and measured out the filling. This meant that each one cooked the same amount. Last night I wasn't able to use the biscuit cutter since. There for I had odd shaped raviolis and I was also having trouble sealing the pasta's edges. Instead of making ravioli, I decided to pinch the ends together to make tortellini.

If I had known I was making tortellini, I would have made a different filling, but that's another discussion for another day. After experimenting I finally figured out how to create those little stuffed pasta, which perfectly capture a bit of sauce in it's inner nook. This was the one saving grace for last night's experiment.