Tim's New Pasta Toy

The range of tools Tim Stewart employs when creating Altura's pastas can span from simple wooden cylinder-shaped rollers to a classic KitchenAid pasta press, but these devices only render so many types of pasta. The uniform, long noodles of spaghetti, for example, are something that cannot be realistically formed by hand in a timely basis.
Hence marks the arrival of the pasta extruder. As its name suggests, pasta is forced down a tube and through one of various screens to create a perfectly uniform pasta as long as you'd prefer. Tim is using a screen to create bigoli, a long pasta that is slightly thicker than spaghetti.

Though we have favored Piedmontese pastas at Altura with rich egg yolk doughs, the extruder works best with lean and drier doughs so that, once pressed through the extruder, the pasta will hold its shape and won't stick to itself. 

"Mastering the consistency of the dough was the hardest part of learning to use the extruder," says Tim. Though the experimental stage required a great deal of patience, Tim is already fond of the device. "This is probably my favorite kind of pasta to make right now," he said, "but that might be because I have a new toy."

Once the pasta is extruded, Tim checks to make sure it isn't sticking together and will add semolina flour to coat, wrap it in a thin, dry towel, and cover it with plastic to prevent moisture loss until service. 

The bigoli is freshly arrived to our tasting menu--you've got to come try it for yourself! Also, check out this mini video of Tim using the extruder to see it in action: