I think the discussion here is relevant to this post
If my noodles dissolve into congee, i wouldn’t leave them in the broth. But they don’t. They remain distinctly noodley. Just soft and broth-flavored. I use Barilla noodles for this dish.
Well being 100% durum wheat makes a difference (and AFAIK the super cheap pasta are not) other than that it’s all marketing BS if you ask me.
The picture looks better, but some marketing may be involved if it came from a specific company. If it made that much difference, wouldn’t more people eat pasta whose cross-section is closer to a many-petalled flower than a circle with a few shallow grooves?
I found the pic linked in a Reddit thread, and I can personally assure you that’s what the two different types look like, having seen both types myself here in my very own kitchen.
I suspect, just like most other foods, there are going to be different levels of caring about the taste and texture of one’s noodles, as I already mentioned in post #32.
I meant after it has been cooked and is sitting in the pot. It’s hard to salvage for second helpings.
Fair enough. I also trust the culinary opinion of @pulykamell.
I checked the boxes of Barilla spaghettini I have and also a store brand spaghettini (President’s Choice). The latter clearly says that it’s made from 100% durum wheat semolina. The Barilla packaging is a bit confusing. It appears to list two ingredients, worded as follows: “semolina (wheat), durum wheat flour”. Semolina is normally considered to be the coarse flour that comes from milling durum wheat, though Wikipedia says it could also refer to other coarse flours. Barilla claims that they use only durum wheat.
My conclusion is that the two ingredients refer to coarse durum semolina plus finer durum flour, and that for whatever reason the spaghettini is made from both, primarily durum semolina, but 100% durum wheat, just two different textures. I don’t know whether the inclusion of the finer durum flour is supposed to improve quality or reduce cost. Possibly the latter, since durum flour is an inevitable byproduct of the milling process.
Too late to edit the previous post, but I looked at the actual ingredients list of the President’s Choice spaghettini instead of just the claim on the front of the box, thinking it might look the same as the Barilla. Nope. Instead of “semolina (wheat), durum wheat flour” it says simply “durum wheat semolina”, nothing else.
PC is a kind of premium store brand (“No Name” is the lesser one) so it might actually be a superior product to Barilla. I’ve had those boxes a long time but they’re not yet expired so I think I’ll use that the next time I’m making pasta.
ETA: I had a close look at the actual noodles. They’re quite different. The President’s Choice spaghettini is pale yellow, the Barilla is much darker.
PC has a “black label” that makes top notch products like squid ink pasta. I find their regular store brand stuff ranges from extremely good to surprisingly mediocre, which makes sense given thousands of products by different manufacturers. But their Italian stuff tends to be very good.
Store brands are a funny beast. Some of Consumer Reports highest rated foods are “Great Value”.
I’m not discerning enough to tell the difference. really. I recently read about bronze die pasta. Supposedly, it’s got a slightly rougher texture and clings to the sauce better.
What Is Bronze-Cut Pasta? (And Why It Matters) - Home Cook World
My daughter served us some, this past December, and it was tasty enough but that was largely due to the sauce.
Some time, if I can find some in a commonplace shape, I’ll try to do a comparison and see if I notice any difference.
I agree. Arguably, the PC stuff may have been more consistently superior back in the days when Dave Nichol ran the place, and traveled the world sampling exotic foods and looking for inspiration for new products. But yes, President’s Choice is generally a pretty reliable brand. My latest discovery of PC-branded ravioli imported from Italy is really good, and although I dislike almost all commercial pasta sauces, the fresh refrigerated PC-brand rosé sauce is very tasty.
I have four different brands of dried pasta in my cupboard. The Barilla, which is scorned by my Italian coworkers, is the only which does not contain any information about how it was drawn. Two specifically mentioned bronze. The third only mentions that it is coarse drawn.
Barilla Fusilli Integrale: Durum whole wheat. No mentioned of how it’s drawn. [0.50/100g] (There’s another version that’s cut with bronze that’s 0.74/100g]
De Cecco Fusilli: Slow-dried, mountain water, semolina made from durum wheat, course drawn [0.59/100g]
Sapori Gnocchi Sardi: Al Bronzo, semolina made from durum wheat [0.52/100g]
Alnatura Faralle Whole wheat (durum) drawn in bronze. [0.26/100g]
Cheapest stuff is 0.14/100g
For mac & cheese, I’ll often just use the store brand. One or other of the brands is on sale at least once a month - “buy one get one”, so I might as well buy a name brand.
Not in my kitchen, but also stocked in the nearest grocery store is Rummo, which is comparable to De Cecco. My Bolognese coworker only bought De Cecco and Rummo when he was living here. But he’d also just make fresh pasta, if he had time.
i found “better” pasta is about 10% better, but costs about 110% more … so I tend to stick with the “promotionally priced” product …
if you want to max. the sauce-portability, I’d rather hand the task over to physics, (as opposed to my wallet) … and move to:
beats the most expensive spaghetti by far
I rather spend an extra dollar on a better sauce to make for an overall better dish … you get more milage x doller on sauce than on pasta imho
This has been a very useful thread. I decided to get some fresh President’s Choice fettuccine after looking at it closely and observing that it has exactly the rough texture of bronze-die pasta in the picture that @romansperson posted. As I said somewhere I don’t normally buy fresh pasta except in the form of ravioli, but fettuccine is a fairly big noodle so I think it will still turn out al dente if I’m careful.
I also got three more boxes of President’s Choice dried spaghettini. I’m intrigued by the paler colour than Barilla and the fact that there is no durum flour in the ingredients, just pure durum semolina (same with the fresh PC fettuccine). I may end up preferring it to Barilla, which would be a shame because I have about nine boxes of Barilla. And, not that price matters a whit for something as cheap as dried pasta, but interestingly the PC stuff is 50¢ cheaper than Barilla.
This is all news to me. I buy an eight-pack of spaghetti from Costco, so I’m clearly a Philistine when it comes to pasta. I’m more invested in the sauce than what it goes on, I guess.
I would tend to agree. OK pasta + good sauce = good meal.
OK pasta + bad sauce = bad-to-edible meal.
Fancy pasta + good sauce = good meal.
Fancy pasta + bad sauce = bad-to-edible meal.
This of course requires some scientific study. Next time I shop, I’ll see if I can find something that says it’s bronze-cut (not bronze-style, as one package said), and a similarly-shaped non-bronze product, and compare the two with the same sauce.
I have a hard time discerning between dried pasta quality. Kinda like wine. Dirt cheap crap is crap. Mid-range is preference but all are fine. High end, you probably can’t tell. Super high end…you can probably tell but is it really worth it?
To me, the main difference is fresh, homemade pasta versus dried. The fresh stuff wins every time (almost…there is at least one exception I know).
I have yet to see any pasta laying any claims to what the extrusion dies are made of, bronze or otherwise. In today’s shopping, armed with the information in this thread, I just inspected the fettuccine visually. For very thin noodles like spaghettini, it’s actually hard to tell, and for the same reason probably doesn’t really matter much. But certainly the ingredients they’re made from are important. I’d love to know why PC spaghettini is so much paler than Barilla, and plan to discover by scientific experiment whether that makes any difference to taste or texture. 
But you’re absolutely right that the sauce is overwhelmingly important! The second most important thing is proper cook time for the pasta – mushy pasta is no joy for anyone!
Weird. They usually advertise bronze cut.
I make a point to try to buy something marked “Product of Italy” even if it’s just cheap Safeway stuff priced similarly to all the others. I understand in Italy there are specific required standards, and that even the cheap stuff tends to be better than the non-Italian versions sold in America. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, who knows.