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Most pasta is made from durum wheat semolina flour and water, with or without eggs and come in different shapes and colors. Natural ingredients such as tomatoes, basil, spinach, truffles or cuttlefish ink may be added to color or flavor the dry pasta.
Dried Italian pasta is made from durum (wheat) semolina. Only high quality wheat that contains high levels of gluten will allow al dente cooking, i.e. pasta that is firm and tender at the same time. Contrary to what most non-italians think, achieving the right al dente cooking point is not so much a question of correct timing as it is of quality of the pasta. Some lower quality pasta will never allow al dente cooking: it will either be too hard, or stick together. Fresh pasta will be cooked al dente very quickly, usually after just a couple of minutes.
True Gnocchi are not made of wheat, but of mashed potatoes. Nowadays you also find gnocchi as a form of wheat pasta, where the pasta is made of semolina but in the traditional gnocchi shape.
Each shape of pasta is typically matched with a particular sauce based on consistency and its ability to hold sauce. Thin sauces like tomato sauce the outside of spaghetti or flat pasta like linguine, giving it a fuller flavor. Tube-shaped pasta, like penne (especially the striated penne), or shell-shaped pasta, like orecchiette, trap thick sauces such as pesto, meat or cream sauces, giving the pasta a richer flavor. Some pasta varieties are uniquely regional and not diffused throughout Italy. In other cases, the cut of pasta is present in more than one region, but the cut is called by another name.
Italian pasta can be divided into:
- Long cuts
- Short cuts
- Filled pasta
- Pasta in sheets (Lasagne, Tagliatelle and Cannelloni)
- Pasta for soups
Pasta can be bought dried or fresh. "Fresh" packed pasta has now also become more and more widespread. Fresh home-made pasta cooks very quickly and has a delicate taste, but spoils quickly due to its high water content. Dry pasta generally contains about 10% moisture, which makes it shelf stable for about three years. "Fresh" packed pasta, has a taste intermediate between fresh and dried pasta and has a shelf life of around 7 weeks. Many brands now also offer true italian pasta preparations in frozen form.
Home-made pasta is further divided according to the technique or instrument used to stretch or cut the pasta, such as ferro, torchietto, chitarra, or pettine. Spaghetti alla chitarra, for example, have a characteristic square shape because the dough is pressed through the cords of an instrument that reminds a guitar. Roughly speaking, these production techniques can be divided into extrusion-based methods, where the ingredients are forced through holes in a plate known as a die, or lamination-based methods, in which dough is kneaded, folded, rolled to thickness, then cut by slitters.
