Lello 2720 Pastamaster 2200

Pasta Makers

Lello 2720 Pastamaster 2200 Review

I've made hundreds of pounds of pasta over the years, both cooking professionally and at home for my family and friends. In addition to these automatic machines, I've used the SS manual hand crank machines as well, and while they have nostalgia and some positive features, they can't beat the speed of this machine when I'm just cooking at home and want to whip something together. (obviously, I would not recommended using this model in a restaurant setting.)

I purchased this product at home after using an older Simac machine for many years. (It is my mother's machine, and it's very well made and still works great.) The Lello is really an update of that product, and through practice, it will provide excellent pastas.

I COMPLETELY understand people's frustrations; sometimes it can seem like the machine is impossible to master. Here are some easy tips to get good results, beyond the obvious, like reading the instructions. In reality, the main suspect is usually the flour and overuse of liquids, which you can in some ways control, and other ways not.

1) Patience: People are often too quick to add additional water and/or eggs when the dough doesn't seem quite right. Give it 30 seconds between additions, and add the liquids slowly. Otherwise, you'll add more water, it will look right, and then all of a sudden, it will knead and turn into one ball when you go to extrude. This is the #1 way to kill the motor.
2) Precision: Though it's not as critical for this as opposed to baking, (because you can adjust your liquid as you go,) weigh your flour. It will cut down on the batch to batch variation. A cheap digital scale is amazing. Also, always use the same size eggs if you use eggs. It makes consistency easier.
3) Like someone else said, always error on the side of more flour as opposed to water. It's much easier to correct the problem with water than it is by adding more flour.

4) Understand the flour you are using and conditions:
Unfortunately, flour varies year to year, season to season, and depending on where you buy it and how you keep it, bag to bag. In my opinion, this has more of a effect on pasta making than anything else, even though your not actually cooking it in this machine. Also, some flours are more difficult to work with than others; semolina (mixed 50/50 with all purpose) is trickier than just using all purpose and eggs. My advice: find a flour you like, stick with it, and control your conditions. Keep the flour fresh, store it properly, and that goes a long way towards good results.

Overall, I recommend this machine; you will never go back to dry pasta once you get used to how good the fresh is!

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