www.marchenet.it

The home-made pasta and bread were the base feeding , often the only one, of the sharecropper families. The battle of grain in fascist age, paved the way to a deep research program.

The alimentary pasta distinguishes in dry pasta, of hard grain flour, and fresh pastas, that can be of tender grain flour, flour or a compound, and they are mostly handicraft and home-made working.

Dry Pasta: it is made of hard grain flour pasted with water. 
The hard grain flour is richer of protein elements comparing the tender grain flour: so the consequence is that it is a paste better resisting the baking, it remains more elastic and it develops a good grain scent. 
For Italian law the dry pasta must be produced with hard grain pulverized: the addition of tender grain flour (the flour of breadmaking) is considered adulteration. 
In 1988 the EEC regulations are available also in Italy, in some way contradicting the Italian law, in fact they authorize the pasta production also with tender grain flours or mixtures of flour and flour at lower costs. 
Beyond the type of wheat the flour is made with, a very important element for the quality of the pasta is the drying process, that once took place in the sun and today with industrial procedures, except for smallest artisanal pasta factories; any  the procedure is, it must be gradual and in several phases, and last, according to the formats, from 40 to 80 hours, and from 38°C to 60°C the top quality pasta is obtained .
The important element is that the dies are in bronze: their rough finishing touch gives the pasta a rough surface, not vitreous, on which the gravy is valued. The baking of dry pastas is very simple, but it demands some attention. 
The water amount must be 1 liter for 100 g of paste, to which 1O -12 g for liter of marine salt are added when the water is boiling: if you put it before, the boiling is slower. 
The pasta for the preparations said " in broth " that is it is not drained but served with the liquid and the other elements of baking, needs obviously little liquid: two or three times its weight (that is 2-3dl of liquid for 100 g of paste). 
Two or three minutes after putting the salt,  paste is thrown down, stir with a  wood carving fork, also during the baking. 
The long and relatively thin pastas (spaghetti, linguine etc.) can be drained with the carving fork, the short ones require the normal colander for straining pasta. The concept of " al dente" is recognizable when the pasta offers an elastic and tenacious resistance.
The tasting is the only element of control, together with a certain experience.
Also the whisking process or "mantecatura" is in fashion in some restaurants, that is the quick passage of the pasta in the pan or in the gravy frying pan, is a practic fitted to particular recipes, but a few.

made by