There’s only one thing better than the pasta made from my Nonna’s hand cranked pasta machine, my Phillips Avance Pasta Maker. It’s pasta making made simple! But to get it to make great pasta, as good or better than Nonna’s, it takes some trial and error that I’ve already done for you. If you’ve never had fresh homemade pasta it’s an entirely new experience. Once you try it and see how easy it is to make with the Avance, you’ll NEVER go back to store bought pasta ever again. Dried box pasta is flavorless in comparison. This isn’t your Nonna’s Pasta Maker I inherited my grandmother’s hand-cranked pasta maker that presses the dough to make thin noodles such as those used in noodle soups, lasagna, fettucine dishes, ravioli, etc. I’d mix the dough, knead it, wait an hour for the gluten to set, and then I would feed the dough through the hand cranked press 4 or 5 times, turning the dial to press the dough thinner and thinner with each pass. With the last pass, I’d put the paper thin dough through the part of the machine that cuts the noodles. This method makes egg pasta as thin and light as tissue paper. Dishes like lasagna come out airy and fluffy compared to the lasagna noodles from a box that I find make lasagnas thick and heavy. The time-consuming work was in mixing and kneading the dough, which though providing a good workout for my biceps, took a couple of hours and created a mess in the kitchen that was sometimes hard to clean up. Back in the 1990s, I bought an automatic pasta extruding machine, the predecessor of machines similar to the Avance from a TV infomercial. Like the Avance, it extruded pasta dough through holes in a disk, similar to a child’s Play-Do Fun Factory. The machine worked about as well as that toy, burning out after a couple of weeks. For the last two years, I had eyed the Phillips Avance Pasta Maker as reviews said it is a high powered, heavy duty machine that mixes the ingredients, kneads the dough and extrudes the pasta through disks that could be swapped for various shapes. The Avance comes in two models. The least expensive model comes with plastic cups with fill lines for measuring the amount of flour and water for either a small serving, approximately ½ lb, or larger serving, approximately 1lb. The second and more expensive model is a “Smart” version where you add a given amount of flour, the machine weighs the flour, and using it’s LED, suggests the exact amount of liquid to add. I saw no advantage to the more expensive version as it makes no more pasta for its $100 premium. Small and large measured portions are fine with me. Other than that, both models are identical. Both are heavy, about 19lbs, and powerful. There is a smaller model called the Viva, which isn’t all that less expensive, isn’t all that much smaller, makes half as much pasta and is less powerful than the Avance so I stuck with the larger model. The Avance is a powerful, professional machine that takes only 15 minutes to make a pound of fresh pasta! Using the Phillips flour cup, just pour flour into the machine using either one cupful for the small ½ pound serving or two cupfuls for large 1lb serving, select your serving size on the control panel, start the machine and slowly add the liquid, water and/or egg, from the liquid cup. The machine blends the ingredients and kneads the dough for 3 minutes and then for 12 minutes the machine goes into extrusion mode, pushing the dough out through the slots or holes in the disk. Towards the end of the 15-minute cycle, the machine reverses itself to collect any remaining bits of dough, and again starts extruding the remnants until very little dough is left. My machine came with four disks—ziti rigatti, fettuccini, spaghetti, and lasagna with other disks available from Philips and third-party manufacturers. Depending on where you buy your machine or which model you have, the machine may come with more or different disks. This machine sounded too good to be true but at the $399 price point, or $250 discounted and $499 or $350 discounted for the Smart model, it was out of my price range. Monthly, I would search for price drops and one day it showed up as a refurbished item on Amazon for only $129 with 2-day free Prime shipping. Out came the credit card and in two days I was ready to make my kids their favorite pasta dish, ziti with sausage and broccoli. Review My Avance arrived and free shipping was well worth it, as the shipping weight is over 20-lbs and the box is large. My first impression when unboxing was that this machine is well made, with a heavy motor. A front panel that absorbs the force of the extruder and the armature are both made of heavy steel while the outside is washable plastic. It was easy to put together with only five parts. It’s large, taking up about a square foot of counter space and, because of its size and weight, isn’t the kind of appliance you put away and take out when you need it. It’s best left on the counter but since I use it every other day now, it’s one of my more prized items on the countertop. Along with the disks, the Avance also includes a pasta cutter that has a pin at the end to clean certain disks as well as 2 plastic disc cleaners. Making pasta couldn’t be easier as I described. As the machine is mixing and extruding, you’ll notice the dough isn’t like the rubber ball consistency of hand-made and kneaded pasta dough as that would be too dense to be extruded. The consistency of this dough is dryer and can best be described as crumbly, like wet beach sand (see photo). Place a large mixing bowl underneath the extruding disk to catch the pasta and, as it comes out, cut the pasta to the desired length. Be ready with the pasta cutter or sharp knife. The pasta should extrude easily at a perfect consistency. Cooking and Results With the ziti, the suggested cooking time in boiling water was 8 minutes, which is far longer than for other fresh pastas I've made. Usually you just wait until the pasta floats, which usually takes about 4 minuets. Dried pasta takes longer, 9-12 minutes but it needs to be reconstituted while it's cooking. I found this long cooking time odd at first, but I found out why. I was happy with the whole process but not with my initial results. First, the pasta stuck together in the bowl. It tore when separated and at that time I noticed the pasta was much thicker than the pasta’s made with Nonna’s hand-cranked machine and twice as thick as boxed dried ziti from the store. This thickness made the pasta heav ier than expected and was why it took 8 minutes to cook instead of 2 or 3 for other fresh pastas. My children liked the taste but didn’t like the heaviness, preferring the dried boxed pasta. I tried the other disks and shapes that came with the machine and, though not as heavy as the ziti, they were still heavier than the boxed or machine pressed versions. This didn’t seem right so I went on a quest to resolve some of the issues with the machine. After much trial and error, here is my guide to making perfect pasta with the Phillips Avance Pasta Maker. Most Important - Use 3rd Party Disks. The thick pasta culprit is the Phillips-made disks themselves. There are several third-party manufacturers of pasta disks. I’ve tried Pastidia.it bnnrecipe.com, pastadisc.com and over at Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/market/philips_pasta_maker_discs .Pastidea sells disks made of bronze, a metal that has been used to make extruded pastas for centuries and these disks are tested to make pastas of perfect thickness. They come in about 100 shapes, from a round fluffy potato gnocchi, to things like shells, stars, angel hair, wagon wheels and other popular shapes. The bronze disks gives the pasta a rough texture that Italians expect from their extruded pastas. The others are made from hard plastic like the Phillips disks and are less expensive than the bronze disks. I've tried all 3 companies and the quality is excellent! If you’re looking for a thin noodle like the ones that come out of the hand-cranked machine, any disk that produces pasta 1mm or less in thickness will be thin and light. Some are an incredible .6mm! Because the pasta is thinner, you actually get a larger volume of pasta than with the Phillips disks. In fact, after the 15-minute automated extruding process, I had about 20% of the dough left in the machine so I just selected the extrusion-only mode to extrude the rest of the pasta. I find when using disks with 1mm or less thickness, I add a little olive oil, about 10% of the liquid and it makes it slide through the narrow slit easier. Flour. In my last blog, I covered the three types of flour used to make wheat pasta, All Purpose, 00, Semola also called Semolina, and all worked well in the Avance. I did have to add about 15% more liquid when using Semolina flour to get the proper dough consistency. I’m assuming that since semolina is a more course grind, and therefore a larger grain of flour than the others, that it absorbs more liquid, requiring more to get the right consistency. You can use other kinds of wheat flour such as whole wheat, spelt, kamut, farro, bulgar usually blended with the traditional pasta flours. Other grains that have gluten can be blended with flour such as barley, rye, triticale and oats. All Purpose Flour blended with corn meal can be delicious. When using other flours or grains, you may have to add more or less liquid but the machine comes with a wonderful pasta recipe book and there are many recipes online and in the social media groups to try. Gluten Free Pasta. Gluten is an amazing and wonderful quality of flour, but not for people with Celiac’s Disease or wheat allergies. The Phillips Avance Pasta Maker makes the best no-wheat Gluten Free Pasta, far better than the commercial brands, with a taste that rivals wheat flour pasta. You’ll find many recipes for Gluten free pasta that use rice, tapioca, xanthan gum and other ingredients but you need to be a chemist to put the mixture together. A product available at many supermarkets and online, Bobs Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten Free Baking Flour, works great and here’s the instructions to use that brand of pre-mixed gluten-free flour from the Phillips website: https://www.usa.philips.com/c-m-ho/philips-chef/recipe-overview-page/main-courses/gluten-free-pasta For Asian dishes requiring Rice Noodles, the Phillips machine is extremely popular in that part of the world and makes wonderful rice noodles. I made Pad Thai using the rice flour recipes in the included recipe book and the noodles were outstanding. Wheat Pasta is Flour plus either Eggs or Water but Add a Little Oil too Pasta dough can be made from just flour and water, or flour and eggs or a combination and all worked well. I add a little bit of Olive Oil to the liquid as I find it helps with the extrusion. Also, be sure to scramble the eggs well before putting them in the cup as you don’t want the yolks and whites to separate in the short time the machine takes to blend the ingredients. You can add salt and pepper to the flour itself if you like. I make a fettuccine with lots of fresh ground black pepper and it’s wonderful with an Alfredo sauce, giving that recipe the kick it needs. You can make gnocchi with potatoes, cavatelli with ricotta, as well as spinach, beet, and carrot pastas. There are many recipes online and in the recipe book for these and many other pastas. Realize adding ingredients like these may affect the flour to liquid ratio but after you you use the machine several times you'll become accustomed to the crumbly dough consistency, and you’ll start to get a feel for the balance. I blended flour with cooked potatoes 50/50 to make gnocchi and I found I needed less liquid than usual because of the moisture in the steamed potatoes. Adding the liquid slowly and observing how the ingredients blend to make the right dough consistency is important. Let the Dough Rest by Shutting the Machine Off before the Extrusion Cycle. If you’ve made handmade pasta dough, you have to let the dough rest for half an hour or more so that the pasta holds its shape once formed. Resting the dough lets gliadin, a protein in Gluten, go to work by giving dough its plasticity so the pasta holds its shape once formed. The high pressure of extrusion, over 1000 lb per square inch, makes this step unnecessary as it forces the shape. In fact, the Avance completely skips over this step. Many people including myself find resting the dough with the Phillips machine makes for a better textured pasta, while only adding nothing more than time. On the automated Avance machine, that goes right from mixing and kneading to extruding, there’s no option to rest the dough, but I've discovered an easy trick to letting the dough rest. The machine mixes and kneads for 2-3 minutes, then reverses direction to extrude the dough. Start the mixing and kneading process. IMMEDIATELY when the machine switches into extrusion mode by reversing direction, turn the machine off and let the dough rest for half an hour in the machine. Walk away, pour a glass of wine and let the dough sit in the machine for 30-60 minutes. Turn the machine back on and let it go through the mixing and kneading process again. You don't have to add more liquid. If you don’t have the time to rest the dough, don’t worry it will come out perfect anyways. Cut the Dough with a Sharp Knife: The pasta cutter/cleaner that comes with the machine and the pasta cutter paddles that come with some additional Phillips disks are inadequate. They aren't sharp enough to cut the dough but instead tear the pasta, leaving a rough edge. I prefer to cut my pasta with a wide sharp knife that makes a straight clean cut in the pasta. Sometimes you have to work fast and a sharp knife becomes key. Keep the Pasta from Sticking by Sprinkling All Purpose Flour on the Pasta. I place a large mixing bowl under the disks to catch the extruded pasta but first I add a handful of flour to the bowl. As the pasta is extruded, I cut it, and I let the cut pasta drop into the bowl. When the pasta hits the bowl, with my free hand, I just give it a quick toss with the flour at the bottom of the bowl. I keep doing this so all the pasta has a light coating of flour, adding more flour as needed. The light flour coating keeps the noodles from sticking. When you toss the pasta into boiling water, the flour will come off the pasta and will go down the drain when you strain it. No harm done. Connect on Social Media. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and others are great social media outlets to meet other Phillips Avance owners and learn from their experiences, share recipes and find new products and accessories. The Facebook group is very active and can answer all your questions and direct you to some excellent 3rd party disks. https://www.facebook.com/groups/424163347744718/ Cleanup. Cleanup is a breeze with the Avance! The dough, since it’s drier than normal pasta dough, peels off the parts easily and then any remaining dough can be removed by washing in warm water. The parts are dishwasher safe too. The only trick is removing the remaining pasta from inside the disks and its slots. You can use the tool that comes with the Avance but this doesn’t work at all with the narrower slits in 3rd party disks as the tool is too wide. In this case, put the disk in the freezer for 2 hours which dries and shrinks the dough. I then use a needle or toothpick and push the dough gently until the dough pops out the other side. Summary Over the years I’ve become a collector of trendy kitchen appliances-- Panini makers, deep fryers, air fryers, smart toasters, pressure cookers, oddball espresso machines and I have to say this is the BEST kitchen appliance I have ever bought. I am so happy with it. Sure, it took a while to get things just right but I have given you the hints of how to do so. I make perfect pasta every time with no work, mess or sticky hands. Yes, the Avance is pricy but you’ll save money in the long run as you’ll be making pasta a few times a week or making large batches for family and friends as gifts. This Christmas, I made several batches totaling 10 pounds of pasta without taking a break and the machine just churned along. This machine can handle that kind of usage! When buying the Avance, keep an eye out for sales, coupons or refurbished machines. Phillips has great customer service so if you do have a problem, they’re very attentive. The only problem I had is the lid comes with a plastic locking tab and it broke off during the very first use. According to the forums, this happens to everyone. I called Phillips and they sent out a replacement for free. In the meantime, I discovered the locking tab is totally unnecessary but I was happy with the service and it’s nice to have an extra part. The few parts that there are, are all available online if they crack or they wear out. When you taste the pasta and see how ridiculously easy the Avance is to use, you’ll NEVER eat BOXED pasta again! Manga!