Last updated on July 1st, 2019

This homemade gluten-free almond flour pasta is a perfect neutral pasta to top with your favorite sauce. Tender eggy noodles with a silken texture and an ever-so-slightly sweet flavor notes.

This post is sponsored by Bob’s Red Mill, a year-long partner of Snixy Kitchen

I served cacio e pepe with this homemade gluten-free almond flour pasta for dinner on Sunday and my three-year-old took one look at it and, without skipping a beat, instructed, “don’t put that in my lunch tomorrow.”

Excuse me – come again? She followed it up with, “I don’t like that pasta.” The girl hadn’t even tasted the pasta, but she’s three now, which means being contrary is her only job for the next 284 days until she’s four. (That’s how it works, right?). In the meantime, I’m thinking of getting her a shirt that reads, “don’t put that in my lunch.” to save her the hassle of commanding me whenever I serve her unfamiliar food.

But this pasta! It’s basically grown-up toddler food! I fed her the fanciest restaurant-quality homemade. gluten-free. cheesy. pasta. and she acted like I was poisoning her. That is, until she tasted it and changed her tune. This pasta is incredible.  These kids have no idea how good they’ve got it. 

If you’re making plans to serve a special mama something delicious for Mother’s Day, this pasta would top my list.

Homemade Gluten-Free Pasta

This homemade gluten-free almond flour pasta is the third recipe in a year-long partnership with Bob’s Red Mill. So far this year, I’ve made gluten-free pop tarts with strawberry jam and gluten-free matcha crepe cake and now I’m balance out the sweet with this savory fresh pasta. 

Many gluten-free recipes online simply call for any generic gluten-free all-purpose flour. While those certainly have their place (I love Bob’s Red Mill’s gluten-free all-purpose blend), I love creating gluten-free recipes that celebrate the flours that they’re made of with a flour blend tailored to the texture of the specific thing I’m making. I find the flavors more exciting and textures more appealing. 

If you’re new to gluten-free baking and cooking, it can feel daunting (and pricey) to buy multiple bags of gluten-free flours for just one recipe. That’s where I’ve got you covered – with my recipe filter, you can sort recipes by gluten-free flour type(s) to use up whatever bag of Bob’s Red Mill flour you’ve got in your pantry! Once you’ve stocked your pantry with a few of the basic flours, you can make almost anything. This pasta uses three of my pantry staples: almond flour, tapioca flour/starch, and sweet rice flour.

Can you make pasta with almond flour?

Absolutely! Pasta made with almond flour is packed with protein and much more nutritious than traditional pasta.  Almond flour alone is brittle and difficult to make into homemade pasta. Even if you’d managed to form noodles, they’d likely crumble into pieces in the boiling water. That’s where tapioca flour/starch and sweet rice flour come in as the magic super hero sidekicks. They work together to bind the pasta together. Sweet rice flour gives it the pliability and chewy texture reminiscent of traditional semolina wheat pasta. 

If you’ve ever made homemade pasta before, you’ll notice that the dough for this gluten-free almond flour pasta is much softer and sticker than traditional wheat pasta dough. If you increase the ratio of almond flour, the oils from the nuts are extracted out as the pasta rolled try to squeeze the dough through them. Instead, keep the dough softer but dust it generously with tapioca starch. 

How to make Gluten-Free Fresh Pasta?

Gluten-free fresh pasta is so easy to make and so much more delicious than store-bought pasta. Traditional fresh pasta dough that has to rest before you roll it out to develop the gluten. You don’t have to do that for homemadegluten-free pasta because you use tapioca and sweet rice flour to bind the flours together. Just whisk the flours together, whisk the eggs together in a well in the center, slowly incorporating the flour until it forms a dough. Alternatively, dump it all in a stand mixer until combined.

Homemade gluten-free almond flour pasta dough doesn’t have the same elasticity of a gluten-filled dough. This means it’s slightly more delicate. As long as you continuously dust the outside generously with tapioca starch as you push it through the pasta rollers, it’s still easy to work with. 

Making almond flour pasta noodles without a pasta maker

Gluten-free pasta is also so easy to roll it out by hand. No pasta machine required! Without gluten’s elasticity adding resistance, you can easily roll out the dough paper thin with a rolling pin. Just be sure to your surface generously with tapioca starch to keep it from sticking before rolling it out. Fold the paper-thin pasta dough up and cut it into fettuccine strips with a knife. 

Do I need xanthan gum in gluten-free pasta?

Yes. And no. I’ve made many different kinds of gluten-free pasta (see a list below), often experimenting with leaving out the xanthan gum per request from many readers. Time and time again, I’ve found that, without xanthan gum, the dough is just too crumbly. It falls apart going through the pasta maker, or, if you do roll it out, it breaks while it cooks. 

I’ve made a version of this gluten-free almond flour pasta that substitutes the xanthan gum for 1 tablespoon psyllium seed husks (Bob’s Red Mill Psyllium Fiber Powder). The dough is more delicate to work with and to eat than the version with xanthan gum – it will break a part a bit when cooked if rolled too thin.

For that substitution, you’ll need to let the dough rest 10-15 minutes after you roll it together to let the psyllium seed husks soak up some of the moisture and help with the elasticity. Additionally, don’t roll the dough out quite as thin. You can roll it through the pasta maker only on a size 1. However, I recommend hand-rolling this more delicate version with a rolling pin using the alternative method shown here. 

Gluten-Free Almond Flour Pasta 

Using almond flour as the base flour creates a gluten-free pasta that is neutral in flavor with a moderate hint of sweetness. This pasta makes a great neutral pasta to pair with your favorite sauce. Here I’ve turned into cacio e pepe!

I recommend making a large batch and freezing the fettuccine nests, layered between parchment paper to keep them from freezing together. When you want fresh homemade gluten-free pasta, just drop the frozen pasta nests straight into the boiling water. 

My homemade gluten-free pasta dough recipes:

• Gluten-free Chickpea Pasta
• Gluten-free Whole Grain Pasta
• Gluten-Free Chestnut Flour Pasta
• Gluten-Free Chickpea Beet Pasta

Disclosure: Special thanks to Bob’s Red Mill for providing the flours shown above and sponsoring this post! And thanks to you for supporting the companies that keep Snixy Kitchen cooking!