This 1 Tiny Detail on a Box of Pasta Can Make All the Difference

If you’re like most of us, there’s a shelf in your pantry holding several boxes of pasta. The staple food keeps well and can easily be turned into dinner with a simple homemade sauce (or even quicker jarred sauce). 

But if you haven’t given much thought to what’s in the box, you may want to reconsider. Pastas are not all made equally. One small difference can make even the simplest pasta dish taste like it came from the kitchen of a reservations-only establishment: whether the pasta was made using a bronze die.

We reached out to Stefano Ciotti, an Italian chef who recently brought his V Modern Italian restaurants and their celebrated Adriatic coastal cuisine stateside, to help us understand bronze-cut pasta — and why it’s worth seeking out. 

What makes bronze-cut pasta different?

“Most dried pasta is made by mixing semolina [flour] and water into a dough and then forcing, or extruding, that dough through a die (a type of mold) that creates the shape,” says Ciotti.

“High-volume commercial manufacturers often use dies with very smooth inserts, traditionally associated with Teflon/PTFE-type surfaces,” he explains, “because the pasta moves through them quickly and consistently with a very smooth exterior. That efficiency is important when you are producing enormous quantities of pasta.” 

It turns out that those smooth pasta dies, while great for keeping the machines clean and speeding up the production process, do a small disservice to the food itself. “A bronze die creates more friction as the dough passes through it, leaving the pasta with a slightly rough, almost porous surface,” says Ciotti.

“That texture is exactly what you want, because it gives the sauce somewhere to hold. When you finish the pasta properly with sauce and some pasta water, the starch, fat, and liquid emulsify around that textured surface.”

So pasta extruded and cut with bronze dies will naturally hold onto sauce better, and can even help keep the sauce from separating.

That’s not the only difference created by bronze dies, Ciotti says. “There is also a sensory difference. Bronze-[cut] pasta tends to have a slightly more substantial, rustic texture in the mouth, which I personally prefer.”

Is bronze-cut better for certain shapes?

In short, yes, certain pasta shapes benefit more from the rough exterior. While the bronze-cut process can make a difference with any kind of pasta, it’s especially important for shapes that are designed to carry a sauce.

Ciotti’s picks for the shapes where it matters most: rigatoni, paccheri, mezzemaniche, bucatini, spaghetti, and linguine. “With shapes like rigatoni, for example, you have the ridges, the interior of the tube, and the rough bronze-extruded surface all working together to capture the sauce,” he says.

“This is actually something we’re thinking about right now at V. When we select a shape we’re considering not only how it looks on the plate, but its diameter, thickness, surface area, and how it will interact with the particular sauce we’re creating.”

How can you tell pasta is bronze-cut?

Generally the box or bag will carry a label that reads “bronze-cut pasta” or something similar. If it doesn’t, there are still some identifying clues, according to Ciotti. 

First, bronze-cut pasta is generally more matte rather than glossy. Second, it has a rough or slightly powdery texture. Finally, it tends to be paler or more opaque than the bright yellow pasta you typically find on grocery store shelves. 

Overall, if the pasta looks perfect, it’s probably not bronze-cut. If each piece looks a little different, then you’re on the right track.

And while many high-end grocery stores sell delicious — and expensive — bronze-cut pastas, you don’t have to go far out of your way to find it. Major pasta producers such as Barilla now sell bronze-cut pasta. You can even find it at budget grocery stores such as Aldi.

According to Ciotti, that’s a good thing. “I think it’s great that bronze-[cut] pasta is becoming more accessible,” he says. “I wouldn’t dismiss a pasta because it comes from a large producer, and I wouldn’t automatically assume a small producer makes a better product.”

Instead, Ciotti recommends you look at the entire package and ask a few questions: 

• Is it made from durum wheat semolina? 
• Is it bronze-cut? 
• Has it been dried gently rather than extremely quickly at very high temperatures? It might say “slow-dried” on the package. 

“Those things matter more than whether you bought it from a specialty Italian market or a supermarket,” says Ciotti.

Final thoughts: The shape is an ingredient

“One last thought I would add is that a bronze die may seem like a very small detail, but Italian cooking is often about exactly these small details,” Ciotti says. “A different die changes the texture of the pasta. The texture changes how it carries sauce. Suddenly the entire experience of the dish changes.

“That’s why we’re still investing in new dies and developing individual pasta shapes around specific dishes. The shape of the pasta is an ingredient in itself.”