I had my first Daring Bakers outing last month, with the flourless chocolate cake white chocolate debacle. So this month, when I opened the challenge to find out it was homemade lasagna, I almost did a little dance with joy. An excuse to break out the pasta machine! A new lasagna recipe! Something I won't eat entirely in one sitting!

Never mind that I am in a seemingly endless project of refinishing the hardwood floors in my house. As the deadline approached, I figured I could apply my multitasking skills. Why not make lasagna on the same day that Scheidt and I* were going to replace subflooring? Rolling fresh pasta and home improvements go together like salt and chocolate.

The multitasking worked well enough during the ragu-making stage, and I felt pretty smart. But the spinach pasta rolling stage exposed my poor foresight. Turns out it's not a good idea to roll out the world's wettest pasta dough at the same time that you are sawing out boards and sanding. However, it is a great way to get extra fiber into your diet, in the form of sawdust.

Fortunately, Scheidt** was very forgiving. He called it his favorite lasagna next to his mom's. He even made a "Will work for good food" sign to hold up during dinner.

*With an approximate ratio of one part LB to every four parts Scheidt.
**Keeper.

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge. The challenge hosts will share the entire recipe on their sites, as it is about 11 pages long.

Do try it. This lasagna isn't about the tomato sauce or piles of ricotta cheese; it's about the pasta... and this pasta is divine. I'm usually a "give me the center piece" kind of girl when it comes to lasagna, but in this case, the dried crispy edges in the corner were my favorites. Each noodle was coated with the lightest whisper of bechamel and topped with the thinnest layer of a hearty meat ragu. I'm guessing Emilia-Romagna is famous for its dairy, because the ragu simmered in milk for an hour, giving the meat an unexpected creaminess.

I like to mix pasta dough in the food processor. In the case of this pasta, the food processor let me get a very even green color throughout the pasta with no little spinach-y blobs. I added a pinch of salt to the pasta recipe, and used about 1/3 semolina flour in place of white flour because I love the texture. I don't know how these alterations may have changed the moisture content of the dough. If your pasta is too wet, as mine was, you can just knead in more flour, a few tablespoons at a time, until it reaches a moisture level that your pasta roller will accept. In my case, I think I kneaded in almost 1 1/2 additional cups of flour.

I rolled out to level 6 on my pasta roller. I could have kept going, but I've made ultra-thin pasta before and wanted something different. Also, since the dough was still a bit wet, it kept sticking to the rollers and wreaking havoc, so I admit I sort of gave up. Finally - after 100 minutes of working with the dough, no joke - I got 16 lasagna noodles from the recipe.