Pasta’s composition is complex. In contrast with other foods like greens, meat, or fish, pasta have no whole cells in it. In cellular, complex foods, the quality and the organoleptic features strongly depend on conservation process. Fresh fish, meat or vegetables, for instance, have a better taste and nutritional contents than canned or frozen food.
What to pay attention to if you want a perfect product
When it comes to pasta, instead, the production and the conservation process go through a number of stages that differs from those of cellular foods, and each phase can strongly affect the final result.
As a consequence, for a very high-quality pasta, three main characteristics make the difference:
- the quality of the raw material; in this case the durum wheat semolina1, that depend on the genetic stream of the wheat used, the cultivation or harvesting methods and so on.
- how the semolina is processed.
- how the product is conserved; the conservation process starts immediately after the harvesting of the wheat and ends when the packages of pasta are opened before cooking.
Whereas point (a)2 and (c) affect the final quality of all foods, point (b) strongly characterizes pasta; the way wheat is processed and the way flour is kneaded in a dough are the phases that have the major impact on what we eventually eat. Starting from the same ingredients, in fact, we can have very different results: many events can happen during each step of pasta production; every one of these contribute to create different varieties of pasta each one with its peculiarities.
to be continued
