Angel’s hair

Angel hair pasta, also known as capellini, or "fine hair," is a long, thin noodle with a rounded shape. It is one of the most classic of all pasta shapes and has been a popular pasta in Italy since the 14th century.

The pasta strongly resembles spaghetti, another long, thin, round pasta. Although it resembles spaghetti, angel hair is much finer. The flavor of angel hair pasta and spaghetti is similar.

Angel hair pasta is often thinner and lighter in calories. Angel hair pasta is thinner variant with a diameter between 0.78 and 0.88 millimeters (0.031 and 0.035 in). It is often sold in a nest-like shape.

The most basic angel hair pasta is made with durum semolina wheat, water, and salt. Durum semolina is a hard wheat, which will yield a slightly chewy, strong pasta.

This delicate shape is best used with simple, light sauces and vegetables, such as pesto sauce or a primavera dish. Angel hair pasta can often pair well with light seafood ingredients, such as scallops.
Angel’s hair

Spaghetti aglio e olio

Spaghetti aglio e olio (Italian for '"spaghetti [with] garlic and oil"') is a traditional Italian recipe that originated in Naples.

Spaghetti Aglio e olio is a traditional Italian pasta dish from Naples. A typical dish of Neapolitan cuisine. The dish is made by lightly sautéing sliced, minced, or pressed garlic in olive oil, sometimes with the addition of dried red chili flakes, and tossing with spaghetti.

There are many different additions and takes on spaghetti Aglio e olio but in its simplest form, easy to prepare, and economical to serve. It is often served with a side of bread, but also can be served roasted vegetables and other classic Italian recipes with these tasty noodles.

Spaghetti Aglio e Olio is a little spicy, it's herbaceous due to the parsley. The garlic flavor is there. The pasta is coated with the emulsified sauce, not oily at all.
Spaghetti aglio e olio

Characteristics of spaghetti

Common pastas include spaghetti, which are long, solid, round and rod-shaped noodles. Spaghetti varies in diameter, from very small-diameter angel hair, or capellini, to medium-diameter vermicelli and spaghettini, to larger-diameter fettuchini.

It is the cooking step that gives the product its final structure and consumer acceptability. The minimum time for cooking spaghetti measuring 1.5 mm in diameter is between 8 – 9 min in boiling water to obtain “al-dente” pasta.

The optimum cooking time corresponds to the optimum characteristics for consumption and varies according to taste.

Other important factors are water to pasta ratio, hardness and pH of cooking water and time elapsed between draining of cooked pasta and eating. Time elapsed after draining has been shown to affect pasta firmness and stickiness.
Characteristics of spaghetti

Barilla - the best selling pasta brand in United States

Barilla, the number-one pasta company in Italy and the United States was the largest pasta market in the world. Barilla entered the US market in 1994.

Initially, Barilla focused on selling a high-quality imported product at a price of $1.29 per box, consistent across all types.

Barilla was founded in 1875 by Pietro Barilla, The bread and pasta shop in Parma produced 50 kilos of pasta every day. 33 years later he grounded an industry with 80 people and production of more than 80 metric tons of pasta per day.

The campaign of the sixties with the slogan ‘Con Pasta Barilla e smepre Domenica’ (with Barilla pasta it is always Sunday) won the price ‘Palma d’Oro della Pubblicita’ and made the brand popular all over Italy.

By the late 1990s Barilla was the leader in Italy in the pasta and pasta sauce businesses and the world leader in the pasta business.
Barilla - the best selling pasta brand in United States

Twisted goods

Spaghetti and vermicelli are sometime sold as ‘biscuits or ‘skeins’, i.e. twisted clumps, which are dried on trays.

These twisted products were formerly made by cutting a handful of vermicelli or spaghetti in 8 or 10 inch length and putting this products in a tray for drying.

In Europe, ‘nidis’ are popular. These noodles arranged in a shape somewhat like a bird’s nest, The noodles are extruded in a cluster and hang down into a hollow metal cylinder.

When the noodle is cut off near the die, the air jet whirls it into desired form, which is then dropped onto a drying tray.
Twisted goods

Spaghetti Processing

Spaghetti Processing
Before the 1800s, pasta was made by hand. The first mechanical devices for pasta manufacturing were invented in the 1800s.

Around 1850, the first hand-operated pasta press was built.

By early 1900s, mixers, kneaders, hydraulic piston type extrusion presses and drying cabinets were available for batch manufacturing of pasta.

In 1933, the first continuous single screw using low temperature drying profiles that mimicked open air drying conditions typical of the region around Naples, Italy.

It required 18 to 20 hours to dry pasta when using a low temperature drying profile. High temperature drying (60 to 80 degree C) of pasta was introduced in 1974 and ultra high temperature (80 to 100 degree C) drying was introduced in the late 1980s.

Drying at high or ultrahigh temperatures has reduced drying time of long goods (e.g., spaghetti) to about 10 and 6 hours, respectively.

Today, pasta manufacturing is totally automated with pasta presses capable of producing spaghetti at 3,500 kg/h and macaroni at 8,000 kg/h.
Spaghetti Processing

Pasta Technology - Die construction

Pasta Technology - Die construction
The basic operation in the manufacture of any kind of pasta is extrusion.

The dough is prepared by the mixer, kneaded by the auger from the mixer to the die chamber, and the force through a die under high pressure.

Dies perform the function of forming the dough into characteristic, familiar shapes.

They are made in both circular and rectangular form, depending on whether they are to be used in oppresses for producing short goods or in an automatic spreader for long goods.

Dies are often made of bronze but stainless steel and other alloys have also been employed.

Combinations of material can be used, as when s stainless steel frame is fitted with brass inserts which can be removed and replaced.

The simplest form of pasta is the familiar spaghetti which is a solid round strand of dough.

On the inlet side of the die the hole is about 0.19 inch in diameter, although slightly different diameters may be employed by different manufacturers.

As the channel proceeds toward the exit orifice, it tapers down to about the diameter of the spaghetti and this diameter is maintained for short distance called the gauging thickness.

Tubular forms, such as macaroni, require a pin in the center of the die. The pin is anchored by two or more wings or extensions near inlet end.

The stream of dough is, of course separated by these extensions, but quickly merges together after it passes them and continues along the channel.

Curved elbow macaroni is formed by drilling one side of the die hole deeper than the other so that the dough will flow faster on that side – there is less friction because the channel is wider for part of its course.

In large elbow macaroni with thick pins, a notch can be cut into the pin to cause the dough to flow faster. Products with wavy edges can be made by allowing the dough to flow more rapidly at the wavy edge.

The extrusion rate through a die hole in a bronze die is normally about one inch per second.

Extrusion rates can be increased and the product made smoother and yellower by putting Teflon inserts into die so that the final extrusion surface is made of this very smooth and low friction material.

Teflon does have come into wide use in marketing regions where products are packaged in transparent film and must therefore have optimum visual quality. Bronze dies are used in area where the pasta is packaged in opaque containers such as cardboard boxes.

It is generally believed that bronze dies yield pasta that cooks in a more satisfactory manner.

Water penetrates more slowly into the Teflon-extruded product and there is a tendency for the surface to become soft before the interior has been thoroughly cooked.
Pasta Technology - Die construction

Macaroni, Spaghetti and Noodles

Macaroni, Spaghetti and Noodles
Macaroni products, alimentary pastes, and pasta are more or less synonymous terms describing a broad category of food products which includes such as familiar items of commerce as spaghetti, macaroni, vermicelli, linguini and noodles. Most of these products can be described as hard, brittle pieces, formed in many different shapes by extruding, cutting, and drying tough dough made of semolina or farina mixed with water. There are many deviations from this simple definition however, and it is the versatility of form and composition which has made such as a simple product so widely accepted among nearly all elements of the population.

Macaroni products are very easy for the consumer to prepare for the table, but the finished dishes are capable of almost infinite variations, two features which contribute greatly to pasta’s popularity. The inherent blandness of macaroni products makes them compatible with many kinds of adjuncts enabling pasta to be used as the basis of hundreds of different dishes which appear to the ultimate consumer to be quite different, in that respect resembling rice, bread, tortilla and potatoes.

Spaghetti, macaroni, and hundreds of other forms of pasta are made entirely, or almost entirely of durum semolina. Small amounts of nutritional enrichments may be added, but these do not materially affect either the organoleptic qualities or processing properties of the material. Water is added as a processing aid in the extrusion step, but it is removed later by drying, except in the relatively small amount of pasta sold as fresh products.

Noodles, in their various forms, require the use of egg ingredients in specified amounts but, in most other respects, they closely resemble regular pasta. The consumer can also find specialty pastas containing ingredients such as spinach and tomatoes, but these varieties are certainly a minor factor in the market. In summation, it can be said that the characteristics of pasta as purchased by the consumer depend almost entirely on the qualities contributed by durum semolina as modified by the processing treatments it has undergone.
Macaroni, Spaghetti and Noodles