Homemade "Cheese-y" Lasagna

Aubrey and I decided to have a cooking night together and try out the pasta maker that he gave me for Christmas. I'll admit that I have a fear when it comes to making dough, but that's Aubrey's specialty. When I cook, I have to go exactly by the recipie (of course, there are some exceptions). I'll blame that on all of my Chemistry classes. Aubrey, on the other hand is the kind of cook that just "dumps." Somehow his dough always comes out perfectly. I insisted that we do the recipe just like the recipe said, but I made a mistake in telling him how much flour to use. Long story short.... he had to start dumping the ingredients until it got to the right consistency. He did a perfect job! He also made up the recipe for the fillings (he just wanted lots of cheese).

We had to roll the dough through the rolling machine several times to knead it. After kneading it, we made the lasagna noodles.

Finished Product

Ingredients:

Pasta-
4 large eggs
1 TBSP water
3 and 1/2 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp salt

Filling-
About 6-9 large lasagna noodles
16 ounces tomato sauce
15 ounce container part skim Ricotta cheese
1 pound bag Mozzarella cheese
About 4 ounced freshly grated Parmesan Cheese

Directions:
Pasta-
Place eggs, water, flour, and salt in Kitchen Aid mixer bowl. Attach bowl and flat beater. Turn to speed 2 and mix 30 seconds.
Exchange flat beater for dough hook. Turn to speed 2 and knead 2 minutes. Remove dough from bowl and hand knead for 1-2 minutes. Let it rest for 20 minutes. Divide dough into 4 pieces before processing with pasta sheet roller attachment. We cut our dough into several pieces so it would work better in the pasta machine. Once pasta is rolled out into lasagna noodles, cook in salted boiling water for about 6 minutes or "al dente."

Lasagna-

Preheat oven to 400.

Put 1/4 of the tomato sauce at the bottom of a rectangular baking dish. Put a layer of noodles on top of the sauce to cover the bottom of the dish. Layer with 1/3 Ricotta and 1/4 Mozzarella and spread another 1/4 tomato sauce on top. Continue to layer with noodles, cheese, and tomato sauce until the last layer of noodles are on top. Top with the last 1/4 tomato sauce and the Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Bake for about 25 minutes covered with aluminum foil. Take foil off and broil for about 3 minutes or until the cheese browns.

***We had some leftover dough, so we used our spaghetti maker and made spaghetti noodles. We are drying them on paper towels and storing in an air tight container for an easy dinner this week.