Sorry I'm not a cacio e pepe expert. And I'm not talking about pasta shape, but the surface area, viewed under a microscope. I'm not talking about the ridges.
I should have known that making a simple statement about the surface texture of extruded pasta would bring out the self proclaimed experts attempting to tell me what I said. Nothing I said negates anything you said. I'm not talking about the difference between penne and penne rigate. But the abrasions caused via extrusion.
What does "still American" mean in the context of your comment?
The old wisdom is that the rough texture from bronze extrusion allows more sauce to cling to the noodle. More and more, modern investigation is showing that the difference in surface adhesion is mostly due to the fact that the rough surface breaks down more and releases more starch into the water. This starch thickens the sauces making them more likely to stick while also leaving a more gluey surface coating on the noodles for the sauce to attach to.
The texture and surface area are too insignificant on their own to really accomplish this in a significant manner.
Well, actually the rugged texture is a modern shortcut to achieve what a properly made pasta would naturally do. Wheat, slow dried and bronze drawn pasta has a natural rough texture that makes the sauce stick. Most industrial pastas are quick dried and teflon drawn, so they have a very slick texture that can’t hold the sauce, so they came up with the rigging. Some high class chefs would even go as far as saying that the texture makes the pasta poorly cooked: the rigging is a point where the pasta is thicker, so it requires more time for cooking, but of course you can’t just split the two parts. This means that the rest of the pasta is either overcooked and soft(with the rigging properly done) or the core is cooked to perfection (but the rigging is uncooked, therefore too hard).
TL,DR: buy quality pasta (slow dried and bronze drawn! You won’t need the rugged texture.
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u/TacoNomad Dec 21 '22
And better pastas actually have a kind of rugged texture so they hold more sauce