Types of Pasta

We Italians never look down on dried pasta. We consider it ideal for many sauces and would never regard it merely as a substitute for home-made pasta.

Factory-made dried pasta is made from durum wheat, ground into very fine semolina and mixed to a paste with water. The dough is forced through perforated metal discs to form the desired shape of pasta, and then dried. The best dried pasta is buff-yellow, translucent and slightly shiny. The most common kinds of dried pasta are spaghetti, bucatini, linguine, fusilli, conchiglie, penne and small shapes for soups.