Handmade Spätzle

Preparation

For doing Spätzle, you'll need:

• a big pot for 5 or 6 litres
• a big bowl to do the dough
• a bowl for the Spätzle, when they are done
• a wooden spoon with a hole in it for beating the dough
• a flat board
• a skimming ladle
• a scraper

Ingredients (for 2 to 3 persons)

• 270 grams wheat flour
• 5 large eggs
• 1 tea spoon salt
• 1 table spoon sunflower oil
• up to 50 millilitres water

The dough

Throw all the ingredients but the water into a big bowl. Add 2/3rd of the water, and stir until everything is nicely mixed. You might want to add some more of the water in small portions if the dough is too hard and dry. It should be smooth, but not too fluid.
When the dough is nice and smooth, you start beating it up for 2 or 3 minutes, to get air into the dough. When you're done with that piece of hard work, you put the bowl on the side, cover it with a cloth and let the dough rest for at least half an hour, more doesn't hurt.

Making the Spätzle

Before we can cook the Spätzle, we have to prepare the pot of water. Since that takes some time, you should start 15 to 20 minutes later. Get 4 litres of water boiling, then throw in 2 table spoons of salt. Keep the water boiling all the time.
After half an hour of rest for the dough, you take the board and the scarper and get them wet. Then you take a big chunk of the dough and put it on the wetted board. Spread the dough for a thickness of half a centimetre.
Get your hands wet, too (protects you from the hot steam), put the end of the board on the pot, and start scraping little long pieces from the dough into the boiling water. These pieces should be long worms, like 7 centimetres long and 4 or 5 millimetres in diameter (just a rough idea, do it to your liking). I like them to be pretty thick, a lot of people like the Spätzle to be a lot thinner.
They have to stay in the boiling water until they start swimming on the surface, like one minute. Then you can catch them with the ladle and put them in a bowl on the side. Repeat all these steps until all dough is gone.