Pasta Manufacture

This is a technical but interesting subject which includes both the choice of ingredients and the equipment needed in order to shape the results (see also the section on pasta shapes below).

Pasta at its simplest is made from durum wheat and water. This special type of wheat is suitable only for pasta and semolina products, not for bread. Conversely, ‘hard’ bread wheat and ‘soft’ cake flour wheat do not make good ordinary pasta (although they are used for home-made fresh pasta, reinforced and enriched with egg, which overcomes what would otherwise be a weak, fragile texture).