Dried Pasta
Dried pasta – a Bronzed Italian?
Well, no, not even bronzed pasta. Trafilato al bronzo means extruded through bronze or bronze-extruded, which is a description applied to pasta which has been extruded through bronze dies in the pasta machine. It is held that the irregular surface of pasta extruded through bronze dies enables pasta sauce to better coat the pasta.
If this is news to you, I suggest you read the packets carefully when you are browsing dried pasta and try some which has been extruded through bronze. If you make pasta at home, your machine may have bronze dies, or perhaps offer some as an accessory. Certainly, the Kenwood AT/AX910 Pasta Makers can be fitted with one of several bronze dies offered by the manufacturer.
Bronze die in the Kenwood AX910 domestic extruder
If the dies are not bronze, what then? These days think non-stick – Teflon or some other, smoother-surfaced dies. The short video below neatly explains and demonstrates the options.
The pasta we are mainly talking about is commercially-made pasta di semola di grano duro, made from durum wheat flour, water, and salt, impelled through a die to give it the chosen shape, then cut and dried. It’s fair to say that the better manufacturers use bronze dies. More pressure is needed to force the pasta dough through bronze dies and this creates the surface markings which hold the sauce.
My Italian is very limited but I am sure I have heard an Italian word for these markings. So I tried searching using the Google and Italian Google portals. It seems that the preferred term in English is striations or micro-striations. In Italian striations are striature, so perhaps microstriature is the equivalent. I did find this Italian word used on an Italian site in connection with ballistics and markings on cartridges so perhaps I am on the right track if not 100 per cent certain. (If anyone can tell me for sure, please do so via the comment feature on this page or via the Contact page -it will be much appreciated).
If you would like to see more about commercial dies you can visit the site of the Copper Development Association or the New York Daily News.
After extrusion, dried pasta can be air-dried naturally or dried using heat sources. Artisan-made pasta will likely be naturally dried. You may detect more/better flavour in naturally dried pasta.
You may care to browse our range of commercial and artisanal pastas, which includes a number which may be described as trafilato al bronzo.
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