Hey guys! I’ve always loved eating whole-grain pasta, since I was a kid. However, I’ve heard that semolina durum wheat may contain less fiber etc., but it’s still supposed to be very healthy and a lot better tasting. To me white pasta has always been flavorless and mushy…just bland…no offense tho, heh. I thought I maybe just had eaten the “wrong” white pasta.
I informed myself about how to spot quality pasta, and I heard that in the first place, the color is important. It’s supposed to be more beige and pale, and the surface should look kinda…like it’s rough and covered in flour. Too quickly dried pasta, and therefore not so good quality pasta, on the other hand, mostly looks very yellow. (So I guess this is true..?). I also read that Rummo and De Cecco are the best brands that guarantee high-quality, original Italian pasta. When I went to the store though, I found my favorite pasta shape, Cavatappi, from De Cecco. But they looked so yellow…like plastic-like yellow in the color. When I grabbed a pack of Rummo pasta, however, these looked beige and pale and seemed like what a good, high-quality pasta should look like.
I’m attaching pics from the internet below.
Why is it this way? Isn’t everything from De Cecco good?
by VegetableCommittee23
10 Comments
My mates wife is Italian. She always recommends De Cecco.
Look at protein content for quality and how its been dried not forced fast. Ignore wholemeal its just scrapends . Unless you can find good quality whole meal. Those brands are both OK.
De Cecco is commodity-grade, Teflon-extruded pasta with nice marketing and packaging.
It’s available in every market, and it would be wrong to say Italians don’t eat it. Of course they do.
What you want to look for is Pasta from Gragnano, which will be bronze due extruded and slow dried for better flavour, texture and sauce adhesion.
I’d recommend La Molisana- it’s bronze, nice and pale, and usually quite affordable
As far as I understand it the yellowing is the maillard reaction. So the quicker it is dried the yellower, and it points to lower quality. I think you get a lot yellower pastas than De Cecco
I think de cecco is the best pasta that’s widely available.
Like other explained the colour/texture depends if the extrusion is done with teflon or bronze dies. The former is faster (the dough goes through it more smoothly) and is not replaced as often, overall make it cheaper, the latter instead requires more pressure and the dough is extruded more slowly, furthermore the die needs to be replaced more often. The outcome is that teflon-drawn production is cheaper, while bronze-drawn is more expensive and the pasta surface is rougher, which in general makes the sauces stick more easily.
This does not say everything about the quality, you can use very low quality wheat flour and still bronze-cut the pasta, but generally if a brand wants to a high-quality product they would use both good flour and bronze dies.
The other very important factor is the drying period, faster drying makes the pasta more brittle and with a worse final texture, in the images you’ve posted both companies use slow drying (Lenta essicazione and Lenta lavorazione, lenta means slow).
Personally I generally buy the teflon-extruded pasta because it’s good enough for everyday use, especially if you use a good quality brand. If I have guests at home I would almost certainly buy the bronze-drawn one.
If it’s flavourless and mushy you’re probably under salting and overcooking.
Salt the water not the pasta, and maybe cook it for a minute less, it’s supposed to have some bite.
Rummo is good, la molisana and Garofalo are good.
Pasta usually isn’t very expensive. Just try them out and see if you like the way it tastes unsauced and straight out of the pasta water. I do this while fishing out a noodle to test for doneness. DeCecco tastes quite good, but my current favorite is Afeltra. TBH, there isn’t *that* much of a difference in taste and texture between the two brands, but it’s enough to be noticeable. If you can’t taste a difference, then it’s not worth the extra money to buy a premium brand.
None of them, since they both use foreign wheat (ukrainian De Cecco, Canadian and Australian Rummo) full of glifosate and other nice stuff. Go for “La Molisana” and “Armando” which use only italian wheat.