Green Pasta Dough

Adding colorants to your pasta dough is a fun way to liven things up a bit and add a splash of color to the plate. It’s also a part of Italian tradition, with regions like Emilia-Romagna serving up spinach lasagne sheets in Lasagne Bolognese and green and yellow paglia e fieno, or “stray and hay,” tagliatelle.

Although green pasta dough is traditionally made with pureed spinach, you can create this color with other ingredients too. In fact, we’ve made dill pasta, basil pasta, and even matcha pasta!

The key to coloring pasta dough is balancing hydration. If you are adding a wet ingredient, like pureed spinach, you’ll want to use less eggs or water than normal. And if you’re using a dry ingredient, like matcha powder or pea powder, you’ll want to reduce the amount of flour you’re using.

Here we share our recipe for a basic green spinach pasta dough, but feel free to get creative with other colored pastas, like beetroot pasta, too.

Green Spinach Pasta Dough

Serves 4

Prep time: 30 Minutes, plus 30 minutes resting
Cook time: 0 Minute

Ingredients

For the spinach purée:
150 grams (5 ounces) fresh spinach

For the pasta dough:
350 grams 00 flour
50 grams semola flour
110 grams eggs
110 grams spinach purée

Method

To make the spinach purée:

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the spinach and blanch, cooking for about 1 minute. Drain. Transfer the spinach to a blender and puree until smooth, adding a little bit of water as needed to get the spinach to a smooth texture.

Refrigerate the spinach purée in an airtight container or jar until ready to use.

To make the pasta dough:

Mix together the ingredients as you normally would. (If you’re not sure, check out our basic dough guide which explains the mixing process. 

Knead the dough until smooth and elastic and homogenous in color, about 15 minutes.

Cover in plastic wrap and let rest for at least 30 minutes.