There’s bog standard extruded dried pasta… then there’s bronze die pasta. One’s better than the other –  guess which? 

You pay quite a bit more for bronze die pasta so let’s discover why. All dried pasta begins life the same way; as a paste made from flour and water that’s forced into shapes through an extruder, then dried. FYI good pasta should only contain these two ingredients (unless it’s dried egg pasta), and durum wheat flour, made from a harder wheat variety, is preferable. With bronze die pasta, the plates in the extruder, called the ‘dies’, are made using bronze, which is a porous, soft metal that gives pasta a slightly roughened surface texture. This unevenness helps sauce cling to the cooked pasta better, making for an overall tastier and more satisfying dish. Bronze die pasta is dried slower too, which makes a less brittle product that’s not as likely to break in the packaging. When you cook it, the water turns a bit cloudy as some of the exterior starch breaks down, and this starchy water is excellent for adding to your pasta sauce to give a bit of body; you won’t get this same desirable release of starch from standard pasta. Aficionados reckon that bronze die pasta offers a more authentic eating experience and, anecdotally, that its greater ability to make sauce cling means there’s less likelihood of it flicking sauce over your shirt when you eat it. (Yay for eliminating stain removal). As it tends to be crafted by skilled artisans, requires more time and overall attention, and is made in smaller batches, its cost is considerably more than standard supermarket pasta.

Once, bronze dies were standard for making pasta but they’ve been replaced by teflon, which gives that super-commercial silky-smooth surface that sauces tend to slip right off. Not what you want. Famous brands of bronze die pasta to look for include Martelli, from Tuscany, Rustichella d’Abruzzo from Abruzzo, De Cecco, and Barilla Collezione. Shout yourself a bag and taste the diff!