Once I watched an Australian MasterChef TV show, one of their judges said a contestant's gnocchi bounced like a ball!
Everyone can make gnocchi by following the Youtube or even from a chef tutor's demo, but most of the time, the gnocchi ended up could bounce like a ball due to excess flour being added to the dough during kneading to overcome stickiness and softness, so how to solve this problem?
Actually, I learned how to make homestyle simple gnocchi from an Italian cellist back in Texas 17 years ago. When I attended chef school, I began to learn how to make other types of gnocchi, I remember I got so frustrated when I refused to add in more flour, I couldn't roll my soft and sticky potato gnocchi dough down the fork successfully, my guts could tell that the problem was not caused by the inaccurate recipe but mainly instructional and technical handicaps. I saw those classmates who worked in the industry before could roll their gnocchi down their forks very well but their gnocchi could bounce very well as well, their gnocchi smelt and tasted floury. I brought my unsatisfaction back home, I couldn't sleep for the whole night as my head was trying to figure out a way to solve general population's gnocchi making's inconsistency and imperfection.
The next day it happened that I had to cook for a catered dinner, I bravely decided to make gnocchi after I thought of a solution in my head during the overnight time. What I needed was more practice to roll the gnocchi through the fork as I didn't have gnocchi board nor the chef school got it. True enough, after rolling more than 200 gnocchi down my fork, since then I never wanted to eat gnocchi anymore if I got a better choice!
One interesting episode happened in the chef school, during the gnocchi's assessment my chef tutor was so proud of my gnocchi that he tried to let other chef tutors tasting my gnocchi. I remember Chinese classmate got curious, he ate a piece of my gnocchi then he said he still preferred his own gnocchi with heavy floury taste and smell!!! I told him it's ok as in the future, he could make his Chinese's wheat flour gnocchi for his Chinese customers but I have to make my Italian potato gnocchi to please my European connoisseur's friends. That's why from these Mainland China's Chinese mentality, I already could foresee why as an Asian/overseas born Chinese, it's very hard for me to find a fair chef job in NZ fine dining scene not according to my race!
The secret of not continuously adding wheat flour to the gnocchi dough to overcome soft and sticky is by greasing your hand to taper the dough, greasing your cutter to cut the dough, and greasing your fork to roll the dumpling. Anyway, you need to add oil and salt to your boiling water to cook pasta, so what's the problem if your gnocchi is greasy? The minute you dumped the gnocchi to the boiling water to cook, just don't add any oil but only the salt.
You must rest and chill your dough in the fridge as well for some time, this also could harden your dough. Try not to use egg white as it will be very sticky.
Most Italian pasta dough is not seasoned with salt, according to what I read is if you add salt to the bread/pasta, these salty bread/pasta will attract moisture and they can't keep for long. This was my experience, once I baked a baguette, accidentally that day I had completely forgotten to add the salt, and that loaf of baguette lasted the longest in my memory, I asked everyone (I baked in my office kitchen, my staff, my sister, and friends could come anytime they wanted) why they didn't rob it like a usual day, they kept quiet, I took a piece to taste only realized that I didn't add the salt and waves of laughter followed. There are many Chinese noodles without added salt, Northen Chinese are the ones who are experts in making noodles and dumplings as they don't eat rice as often. After my Beijing connoisseur friend ate the noodle that my tiger-sister bought from a Mainland Chinese, she told me the noodle could have been tasted better if there was salt being added to the dough.
Life, you have your own option. Either you choose to take the best of each culture or you can keep your stubborn mind thought that your own culture is reigning everything, nobody will lose due to you, only you yourself losing something out of your own awareness!
You can get gnocchi recipe from this link:
http://chefsarawak.blogspot.co.nz/2017/09/entree.html
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