saltyseattle's video: Pasta of Italy Region by Region

Giving you something to talk a-boot. I’ve always believed that in a lifetime, you can only scratch the surface of the ever evolving pastascape, & this project reinforced that. For one thing, Italy is highly regionalistic, & in the past, a pasta-maker had an exhaustive knowledge of pasta, but only from their own region. As I was cursing trofie after making about the 400th one in order to get 30 I considered decent enough to photograph, I thought- how could anyone become truly great at this- only to realize that Ligurian pastai would have perfected the shape because it was one of very few they would make. I wanted to share an anecdote about each shape here, but that’s a book, not an Instagram post, so you get trofie & after that hopefully I can resist. Legend has it, ship cooks docked in Liguria would clean semolina from their hands using seawater, & in that rubbing together motion, created the little dough twists- scraps, really- we’ve come to know as trofie. 🍝 One of my biggest takeaways from this project is that the type of dough informs the pasta shape significantly. There are two main variables at play here- eggs vs water, and semolina vs 00 or other alternative flours. Typically, water-based doughs use semolina, whereas egg-based dough incorporates 00 either entirely, or as a replacement for some of the semolina flour. This is a big history lesson on what was available during the era each shape originated. Tools (from simple rolling pins to sheeters, extruders, dryers and more), refrigeration, agricultural accessibility & trading, temperature & humidity all factored into enigmatic pasta shapes by region, & those variables evolved with time in some regions, whereas others cling more steadfastly to older ways. 🍝 At its most basic, pasta was a way to keep flour from rotting in order to preserve it. Mix in a little water, dry it in the sun, & it becomes something explorers can take on journeys, villagers don’t need cold temperatures to store, etc. Necessity was the mother of invention for pasta in general, and regionally, that also holds true. Have a glut of eggs? Toss them in the pasta. Oh, that makes a very supple sheet that doesn’t break easily- maybe we can stuff something inside to use that up, too! 🍝 Generally-speaking, semolina & water doughs yield shapes that are hand-formed after rolling the dough into cords by hand & cutting it into appropriately-sized pieces for creating each shape. Semolina + water is also the most common dough for extruded (pressed out through holes in pasta dyes) as opposed to sheeted (rolled flat, then cut) shapes. The only shape I’ve included here that requires a pasta extruder is bucatini, although many other hand-formed shapes are also more commonly extruded rather than scratch-made nowadays, such as paccheri & orecchiette. As you move farther up the boot, sheeted shapes made from egg-enriched doughs are more popular. Because of the addition of egg and usually less semolina, more 00 flour, the dough becomes supple & easier to roll out into a thin sheet. From these thin sheets, shapes like pappardelle, tagliatelle, and tagliarini were born (although none are included on this map!). A logical result of making big sheets of pasta is wanting to fill them. Emilia Romagna, Piemonte, & Toscana all have robust filled pasta traditions. 🍝 And then there are the northern outliers, such as Alto Adige and Valle d’Aosta, whose “pasta” is informed as much by the countries they border as the country they belong to. Speaking of other countries, the effect the outside world has had on pasta as an industry is undeniable. Italy exported US$2.9 billion of pasta in 2018, but that only accounts for 30% of total pasta exports, the rest coming from countries like China, S. Korea & Thailand, if you can believe it. Pasta is beloved global food, & while Italy does it with more passion, diversity & history than anywhere else, I consider myself so privileged to be able to keep the tradition alive from afar.