Mastering Pasta: The Art and Practice of Handmade Pasta, Gnocchi, and Risotto [A Cookbook]

A great complement to the kitchen for making various sauces to accompany homemade pasta. Great pictures, recipes, and delicious results, to boot

This cookbook is a true gem for anyone passionate about pasta. The recipes are beautifully detailed, with step-by-step instructions that make even handmade pasta feel approachable. From silky tagliatelle to pillowy gnocchi and creamy risottos, every dish feels like a restaurant-quality experience at home. What sets this book apart is the depth of knowledge—it's not just recipes, but a full education in technique, ingredients, and tradition. The photography is stunning, and the tips throughout are incredibly helpful for both beginners and seasoned home cooks. I’ve already made three recipes and each one turned out amazing. If you love pasta and want to elevate your skills, this book is a must-have. Highly recommend!

Fantastic book! I bought this book before I tried making my first homemade pasta. After reading this I viewed making pasta dough in a complete different way than I would have if I would have just tried a recipe off Pinterest . It explains everything you need to know in detail. From different types of wheat, how and why they affect flavor and texture. The importance of fresh ground flour for flavor and nutrients. The different grinds of flour and flour protein amount, how they affect texture and chew. Also how whole eggs, egg yolks, and oils affect the pasta dough. He offers many recipes for many doughs. I found it very inspiring and was excited to go straight to the store and find different flours mentioned in the book to experiment with! Being an adventurous eater I just loved the recipes! They range from furmiliar to a bit exotic! For example. Some recipes include traditional bolognese, ricotta ravioli, spaghetti with tomato basil sauce, pappardelle with rabbit ragu, culurgiones with sweetbreads (veal brain). Unfortunately I live in a rural area far away from the ocean where I cannot get some things for the recipes such as peekytoe crab. It also covers flavoring pasta dough with things like squid ink or parsley. There are chapters on hand forming pasta, pasta sauces, gnocchi and risotto which were a pleasant surprise! I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in making pasta! It captures the history and tradition of Italy and pasta plus an incredible amount of technical information on making your pasta dough!

This pasta book is great for the beginner as well as the more seasoned pasta chef. There are plenty of pictures in the book. These pictures show not only the completed dishes of most recipes included but often pictures of the steps leading to that completed dish. The book contains detailed information on how to make several types of pasta as well as several different flavors of that fresh pasta. The extra information in this book is amazing!! The table of contents includes chapter titles as well as the names of each recipe within that chapter. Often recipes include short stories that enhance them. In the back of the book is a detailed set of pages which includes sources where the authors got their information for the book as well as what info was obtained from that source. Addresses of each source as well as websites and phone numbers are also provided!! Both authors gave their own personal acknowledgements. A detailed bibliography as well as a very detailed index is also provided. The quality of paper used for this recipe book is great. The paper is thick and seems as if it will be quite durable. The cover seems like it would be easy to keep clean by wiping off with a damp rag. It is a hard cover book. Pages easily stay open at the page where you opened the book and laid it flat on the counter.

Marc Vetri is one of America’s best Italian chefs, and the Philly native’s latest book is a technique-driven walk through the process of making all kinds of pasta and gnocchi. Even though Vetri’s a chef and many of his recipes are derived from his restaurants, the book is firmly grounded as an instructional guide for the home cook. Mastering Pasta is a beautiful book, heavy on photos of the actual making of the shapes, which is key. I especially like the decision to show that homemade pasta is by nature a bit erratic: Not every strand of hand-cut tagliatelle will be the same width, and there will be little creases where you’d folded the dough over. Vetri’s recipes can get a bit esoteric, but he’s very good about offering alternatives if you can’t find sweetbreads or fresh porcini or snails. My main beef with the book is Vetri’s basic dough. His batch is 395 grams, about 2 1/2 cups of various flours, moistened with 9 egg yolks, plus some water and olive oil. Sorry, but I can't see blasting through a whole carton of eggs for a batch of pasta that will serve 4 or 5 people. I mean I understand why Vetri does this: He runs a restaurant. He’s trying to make a plate of pasta a special thing on a menu in a lovely restaurant. And his dough is indeed wonderful. But it’s just too spendy for a Wednesday night. And, given that you can whip up a basic batch of pasta in an hour, it’s not crazy to think that some cooks might want to make pasta regularly, and not for special occasions. My advice: For day-to-day pasta making, use the Italian standard of 1 whole egg for every 100 grams of flour and you’ll be fine. That said, I love this book. Vetri’s flavors and originality are remarkable. Hell, he’s even created a new pasta shape called “dove pasta,” which looks a bit like the eagle pattern you see in Southwest Indian weaving. I’ll definitely be making that. His technical sections are my favorite part of the book, and are useful no matter what you put on your pasta. His section on wheat is fascinating. What wheat you use actually matters, and they tell you why. Vetri shows you pasta shapes you’ve never seen before, combined with flavors you hadn’t thought of. Bottom line: Buy this book if you’ve made pasta at least a few times before, and want to drill down deeply into the subject. Vetri is a master and it shows, and his recipes, instruction and flavors are top notch.

Absolutely loved it. Such a beautiful book, filled with very well thought out images and accurate instructions. This book is for any cook.

Very good!!!

Don’t know it was a gift with the pasta maker

We already did some recipe from that book and they turned amazing. Everything is well explained and it is far more then a recipe book. Explanation about wheat, flour, hydratation and so on make it a useful resource for any one that what to go into pasta making or refine his/her skill set.

丁寧な説明で、簡単にパスタを打てました。

Great detail in explaining the process of pasta making, except for how to fold the dough in order to make a perfect rectangle. This folding process is illustrated in Marcella Hazan's "Classic Italian Cooking". I got the dough right on my first try, which I had never been able to with other cookbooks. It was silky and stretchy, as it was supposed to. I was really amazed at my skills! I guess when authors are good teachers, anyone can succeed at cooking! It's a great book, he uses the metric system which is great for us Europeans. I highly recommend this book.

Nice

This Book is recommended by J. Oliver, and that is a big deal for me. This book, Mastering Pasta has all the information to succeed in making recipes with pasta, it is so well written, assembled. From easy to not too easy recipes. But all are absolutely delicious. The pasta making techniques will inspire you to explore with other flours, which I never dared to do. Beautifully described recipes with pictures. The "Selected Bibliography" is a jewel of discoveries to explore. Two masters in their field Marc Vetri and David Doachim will have you raving for more recipes. Real Good Cooking Book, more than 5*****