Pasta

Making pasta is a relatively simple process—something as straightforward as mixing flour and water and then running the dough through a pasta machine or shaping it by hand. However, as with all good cooking, there are endless ways to improve simple pasta and turn it into an exquisite meal. Most commercially available pasta is made with non-stick Teflon dies because it’s relatively inexpensive and well suited to pasta production. But it’s not ideal, as Teflon dies create a smooth surface, making it harder for the pasta to absorb sauces or flavourful oils. Zelected Foods has chosen to make pasta using a centuries-old method and bronze dies. Using bronze dies to cut and shape pasta is a traditional Italian production method. The pasta is shaped through a bronze die, which is a perforated bronze metal plate. Bronze doesn’t have a non-stick surface; instead, it tends to grip the slightly sticky pasta dough as it moves through the die, leaving tiny scratches on the surface. The bronze pasta is then gently dried at lower temperatures and for longer than with standard commercial production methods. This gives the pasta a coarser, more porous texture that binds the sauce much better to the pasta.

For Zelected Foods pasta, we select only the best semolina durum wheat. It’s what Italians themselves use to make their very best pasta. Durum wheat is harder than other types of wheat, which means the pasta dough becomes more elastic and doesn’t break as easily when you make it. Semolina is a type of flour that isn’t really flour, but the innermost, hardest part of the durum wheat kernel. This part of the wheat kernel doesn’t become fine wheat flour, but small grains from the very heart of the wheat. Semolina durum wheat has a beautiful, light golden colour and a high content of both protein and gluten compared to traditional wheat. All pasta from Zelected Foods is made from 100% premium semolina durum wheat.