Pasta is my distraction.
I am fascinated with the shapes we can extrude, the textures we can create and the flavors that we can transform all within a noodle. Today I was working with die 72-02, a new shape in the Arcobaleno catalog. It resembles a star with rounded edges. I modified our base pasta recipe, omitting baking soda and using 0.5% salt. Salt, in contolled amounts, has wonderfully beneficial attributes on the texture of noodles. The noodles formed beautifully and retained their shape through the cooking process. The stars cooked in one minute. The increased salt in the dough seemed to give the dough more resiliency with an excellent bite and chew.
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