Fresh pasta scales well because the dough is two ingredients, flour and eggs, and the work moves from hands to machines: a mixer instead of a well on the counter, a sheeter instead of a pin, and a cutter instead of a knife. Write the dough by percentage, rest it, sheet it to one thickness, cut it, and dust and rack it before it goes into trays. Done this way, a pasta maker that made 3 pounds at a time makes about 190 trays in a day, and the cost of a 12-ounce tray falls from $7.35 to $2.43. Dried shapes from an extruder are a different process, in pasta production process. Below is the fresh dough at three sizes, the steps, the trim loss, what a tray costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.
The short version
- Write the dough by percentage: flour, semolina, eggs, yolks and salt.
- Mix by the mixer, then rest the dough.
- Sheet to one thickness and cut on a cutter.
- Dust with semolina and rack it briefly before trays.
- Re-roll trim once; weigh what's left.
- Fresh egg pasta is kept cold and dated.
- TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.
The recipe, by percentage
Prairie Mill Pasta, the made-up pasta maker in Lawrence, Kansas, I use in these examples, made fresh fettuccine 3 pounds at a time until three restaurants ordered it twice a week. The dough, weighed:
| Ingredient | % of the mix | Kitchen batch, 3 lb | One batch, 30 lb | The run, 150 lb | Cost a lb, bought in bulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "00" flour | 50% | 1.50 lb | 15.0 lb | 75.0 lb | $0.80 |
| Whole eggs | 30% | 0.90 lb | 9.00 lb | 45.0 lb | $2.00 |
| Semolina | 15% | 0.45 lb | 4.50 lb | 22.5 lb | $0.70 |
| Egg yolks | 4.5% | 0.14 lb | 1.35 lb | 6.75 lb | $3.50 |
| Salt | 0.5% | 0.01 lb | 0.15 lb | 0.75 lb | $0.40 |
| The whole mix | 100% | 3 lb | 30 lb | 150 lb |
The 150 pounds cost $189.68 in ingredients; eggs are a third of the weight and more than half the cost. Against the flour, the way pasta makers write it, the eggs and yolks come to about 53%. The margins are in pasta profit margin.
The steps, at 150 pounds
- Mix by the mixer. Flour, semolina and salt, then eggs and yolks, mixed until crumbly and pressed into a ball; about 30 pounds a mix.
- Rest. Wrapped, 30 minutes or more, so the flour hydrates and the dough sheets without tearing.
- Sheet. Through the sheeter at narrowing settings to one thickness.
- Cut. Through the cutter to the width, fettuccine or pappardelle.
- Dust and rack. Tossed with semolina and nested on racks for a short dry, so it doesn't stick in the tray.
- Weigh what comes out. Trim re-rolled once; the rest is the run's loss, about 4%.
- Tray and label. 12 ounces a tray, sealed, labeled with the run's lot and date, and into the cooler.
The run takes about 10 hours of labor, mostly at the sheeter and cutter.
What a tray costs at each size
| Per tray | Kitchen batch, 3 lb | Bulk run, 150 lb |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $1.80 (grocery prices) | $0.99 (bought in bulk) |
| Packaging | $0.55 | $0.40 |
| Labor at $20 an hour | $5.00 (15 min a tray) | $1.04 (3.1 min a tray) |
| Cost of a tray | $7.35 | $2.43 |
Eggs by the case and flour by the sack cut the ingredients by about half, and the sheeter cuts the labor from 15 minutes a tray to about 3. The trays are in how to package pasta for sale, and the year in pasta business plan.
Fresh means cold
Fresh egg pasta is a perishable food: it's trayed, kept at 41°F or below, and dated for days, not months. Restaurants that want longer get it frozen in its trays, or a dried shape instead. Handing the work to someone else is in pasta co-packer.
Get the calculator
Download the pasta scaling calculator. Two sheets: scale the recipe, where you type each ingredient's percentage and cost a pound and the raw mix you want, and each ingredient's weight for the run fills in, with the mixes, racks, what comes out after the trim loss, the trays it fills and the cost of each tray; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average trim loss. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Fettuccine, pappardelle and a spinach dough, runs twice a week, eggs from two farms, and restaurants that order by text. A sheet can say how many eggs a run needs, but not which eggs went into which tray, or how many trays are near their date.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield.
The recipe in the units you use. A recipe holds each ingredient by weight, with flour bought by the 50-pound sack and used by the pound, and the cost of every tray comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the flour, semolina and eggs on the shelf allow.
Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of eggs and flour it used, and gets a lot of its own for the trays, with how much came out good, how much was rejected and the labor minutes.
Yield checked from history. From your own batch history, TaroStack says whether a recipe yields what it claims and which ingredient's quantity is off, so a trim loss that creeps up shows in the numbers. A case of eggs past its date is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients for Tuesday's run | Multiply, then check the shelf | What could I make right now |
| Which eggs went into a run | Not written down | Lots recorded on the batch |
| The real trim loss | Weighed now and then | Good and rejected on every batch |
| Eggs past their date | Thrown out, forgotten | Adjustment with a reason |
Recipes, batches, lots and yield are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.