Bacon. The best accompaniment to...well, everything. Bacon is so good that we've seen it added to anything imaginable. We've all had it 50 different ways with little disappointment. And why is that?? Because fat and pork and salt taste good. Always.

Coming up with a fresh take on the bacon game seems to be getting harder and harder these days. Luckily my first instinct is to go straight towards another guilty pleasure and smash 'em together. The result of this amazing epiphany was fresh pasta dough infused with bacon.

We've all had spinach pasta, maybe even some squid ink, but have you ever tried bacon flavored fettuccine? Well fear not because with this instructable you will be eating it in no time!!

Step 1: Ingredients

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup flour (regular flour or 50% flour/50% semolina)
2 eggs
8 oz bacon
1 tablespoon bacon fat
1-2 tablespoons water

Step 2: Preparing the Bacon

The first step is to cook the bacon. You will want to cook the bacon longer than normal to render as much of the fat as you can.

Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes. Or cook in a pan on medium, slow and long.

The time will vary according to the thickness of your bacon. Cook until crisp but not burnt. Then let it cool.

Place your bacon into a food processor and pulse until the bacon is very fine. My food processor didn't get it as fine as I wanted so I used a rolling pin and rolled over the bacon until there weren't any big chunks. If your bacon pieces are to big then the pasta dough wont be able to roll thin. So smash that bacon up good.

After you have ground the bacon as fine as possible you will combine it evenly with the flour.

Step 3: Making the Dough

Take your melted bacon fat and add it to the eggs, whisk briefly to combine them.

Pour the flour/ bacon mixture onto a flat surface in a pile. Create a well in the center to hold the eggs (this can be messy if you don't create a sealed hole.) Place the eggs in the center of the well. Using a fork gently mix and slowly incorporate the flour into the egg. Use your hands and combine all the flour, add water as needed. Then knead the dough for 5-8 minutes.

If you have a kitchenaid you will put your flour/bacon mixture into your mixer bowl. Add the beaten eggs and set
the mixer to 2 using a dough hook. Let it knead for 5-8 minutes until smooth. Add water as needed if the dough isn't coming together.

Place the dough into a bowl and cover. Let it rest for 45 minutes.

*I made this dough both ways and I think the hand kneaded dough turned out a little better.

Step 4: Rolling and Cutting the Dough

After the dough has rested you will roll it to about 3/8 thickness and cut into 3-4 smaller pieces.

Take one piece and run it through your pasta machine at the widest setting. Fold like an envelope and run through 3 more times repeating the fold. Now you will run the dough through while making the setting smaller after each time. When you get the desired thickness let the pasta sit for 10 minutes before you cut it into noodles. For fettuccine I used the #3 setting on my imperia pasta maker.

After cutting the pasta set it aside and prepare your salted boiling water. Boil for 4-7 minutes. They cook very fast so keep an eye on them. Add your noodles directly to your sauce and your done!

Step 5: Bacon Pasta Dough

Because bacon goes well with everything this pasta is very versatile. I made it with a garlic butter cream sauce with sundried tomatoes and it was delicious. The bacon in the pasta adds a subtle smokey flavor, you know it's bacon but it doesn't overwhelm you at the same time. This was a pretty tasty experiment but lets be honest, what bacon experiment isn't delicious?!

If you want to dry your pasta you can hang them. They have pasta drying racks you can buy, I didn't have one so I used my kitchen aid bowl which worked just fine. Since there is meat in the noodles I would eat it within a couple days.