The Real Reason The Drying Process For Pasta Is So Important

You might think there's no food less interesting than dried pasta, but you'd be wrong! Not only can you spend hours learning about different shapes of pasta and what their Italian names mean, but it turns out the process of making dried pasta is more interesting and precise than you might think. And wow, does the process matter in terms of what ends up on your plate. Paesana tells us that fresh pasta isn't inherently superior to dried pasta, but in fact fresh and dried have different purposes in the kitchen. Fresh pasta is best for delicate applications, when you don't want your pasta to be al dente.

Dried pasta is better suited when you want a sturdier pasta, perhaps for a Ragu alla Bolognese. And it turns out that even dried pasta is more complicated than you might imagine. Dried pasta is typically produced in one of two ways: it's either extruded from dies that are Teflon coated or from dies made of bronze, which according to Caputo's is the more traditional method. Bronze cut pasta performs differently than Teflon cut pasta, primarily because the exterior of bronze cut pasta is rougher, which means sauce adheres better. Part of the reason for that difference is the way the pastas are dried.