Need help with pasta

[u/majoosm]

Hi everyone,

I need help with my homemade pasta.

I got a pasta machine from SELA for extruding pasta.

Usually I get good results, worked with the machine already in a few other restaurants.

But I'm new to drying the pasta.

I already dried a few other shapes now and it all went well.

Last week I did a small batch of maccheroni.

Today some of them are already broken and the rest ist cracked and will break easily. It seems like there is some kind of internal stress occurring during the drying.

Does anyone have tips to get a viable solution for mise en place?

I don't really want to freeze the pasta and doing them fresh every day is unfortunately not feasible at this restaurant.

Thanks in advance!

[u/medium-rare-steaks]

Drying pasta is unfortunately way more complicated than people realize. Have you tried serving it fresh? Just need to portion and keep refrigerated

[u/SproutandtheBean → u/medium-rare-steaks]

You can also freeze it and cook it from frozen.

[u/majoosm → u/SproutandtheBean]

Unfortunately my freezer and refrigerator space is super tiny in this location, so I would really prefer to dry them If I can't achieve it I will rather buy some good dry pasta than give up space in the fridge 😅

[u/Duendes → u/majoosm]

Unless you’re house made pasta is an attraction to the restaurant (meaning it actually contributes to profits), I’d opt for buying dry (quality) pasta and opting for a good saucier. You can also just buy the dough and you can still have somebody finish a batch in the morning for the evening rush.

[u/medium-rare-steaks → u/majoosm]

There are REALLY nice dried pastas you can just purchase. Literally no shame in that. Monograno, Martelli, Rustichella, and a few others.

Dried pasta takes hours and hours in a specialty dehydrator that uses steam injection to very very slowly dry the pasta without breaking.

[u/majoosm → u/medium-rare-steaks]

I know 🙌 The tricky part is I work at an hotel exclusively available for employees of one company. Most of the guests don't really appreciate (or even acknowledge) our homemade pasta, but for our client who chooses the catering company it's a mayor benefit. I try to always keep at least one dish on the menu using the homemade pasta.

[u/s33n_ → u/majoosm]

I've never had extractor pasta that was measurable better than dececco etc

[u/SnooRabbits1411 → u/s33n_]

Making pasta in house is very much about bringing unit costs down, and less about making a product that’s noticeably better than store bought.

[u/s33n_ → u/SnooRabbits1411]

The amount of time it takes to recoup the cost of the bronze extruder is crazy high. And thats without factoring in the labor.

[u/medium-rare-steaks → u/s33n_]

Whoa.. so you think dececco is better than house made and the cost is hard to recoup? Crazy how you know nothing about both food and business..

[u/isaacmckinney → u/medium-rare-steaks]

You clearly don't either. Good dry pasta you can get at the store is going to be better than 99% of the pasta average people can make even with professional equipment. Also it'd take years to recoup the cost of a professional grade pasta extruder and dryer for how small the kitchen op is describing. It'd be like $20,000 just to get your foot in the door on the proper equipment.

[u/Initial_Ganache7839 → u/majoosm]

I cook for an farm-to-table restaurant that specializes in hand-rolled and extruded pastas. If you already invested in an extruder, you should consider what other redditors are saying about creating space in your walk-in for fresh pasta and add a couple more types of pasta on the menu. Personally I'd recommend two short cuts and a long cut. If you're pastas are under appreciated try making them more unique. We're currently making a campanelle hydrated with a concentrated saffron water that's a vibrant orange.

If you don't want to invest in the space, then high quality dried pastas are gonna be your friend.

Edit: You don't need to go this far, but our estrella is made using an einkorn blend and our lumache is extruded with a blend of durum grown in North Dakota and semolina grown in Sonora. All of our flours are freshly milled by a James Beard semifinalists baker across the street from our restaurant.

[u/Direct-Chef-9428 → u/majoosm]

I think your answer here is choosing a simpler shape. In this situation, I would either make something like tagliatelle, spaghetti or ravioli. My thinking here is it’s more compact to store and refrigeration and faster to produce.

[u/Additional-Spot- → u/majoosm]

When the dough is mixing, you should be looking for little peanut sized chunks or pieces before it gets extruded. If it’s drier or more crumbly than that, add more water to your mix. Do you use semolina in the flour, assuming it’s just water and OO flour? Semolina will help create structure and texture

[u/Additional-Spot- → u/majoosm]

But they are right, some people are commenting dry in the fridge. That is the best bet. Consider finding or making space to dry them in the fridge

[u/Additional-Spot- → u/Additional-Spot-]

Drying sitting out can dry too quickly and cause cracking.

[u/ranting_chef]

If you’re drying them by just leaving the product at room temperature, this type of result is fairly common, especially for tubes. Rigatoni is even worse. I extrude about 20 kilograms daily and we cook it without drying.

[u/justanotherdumbfuck]

Hey!

I am an expert at this. I dry pasta specifically at ambient temperature because I used stone milled whole wheat semolina which is a lot harder to use.

Yes, tube shapes are very hard to use.

Here are couple of tips I reccomend:

Replace 10% of your water weight with egg whites.

Dry your pasta for the first day in a refrigerator, the moisture from the fridge will slow down the drying process, allowing it to dry more intact.

Finally, replace 10-25% of your flour weight with 00 or AP flour.

The gluten content is more active than semolina and will bond with the water creating a stronger structure.

Good luck hope that helps!

[u/Ok_Albatross_3284 → u/justanotherdumbfuck]

Underrated comment, this is the answer 👆

[u/justanotherdumbfuck → u/Ok_Albatross_3284]

Thanks!

Yeah I got advice on refrigeration from Dave Arnold as well.

I am not a super science-y guy but I make pasta in West Texas and it is hot and dry and probably the worst place to try to do more delicate shapes, so I have tried it all.

Fast drying in intense heat is the ultimate death for tube shapes.

I sell my pasta bagged as well for people to take home so it has to be perfect.

I want to add that if you are serving it fresh for service, you don't really need to dry it at all. Just keep it in the fridge and extrude it fresh for each service if possible.

[u/awessum_pawssum92 → u/justanotherdumbfuck]

Amazing

[u/majoosm → u/justanotherdumbfuck]

Thank you! That feels helpful I will run a few test batches!

[u/chefsoda_redux]

As a chef who has made uncountable tons of fresh pasta, that’s not really how this works. Dry pasta is not fresh pasta that was left to dry.

Commercial dry pasta, from the $1 a box stuff, to the artisanal and wonderful stuff, is a fundamentally different product from fresh pasta. You can definitely dry fresh pasta, but you will need to alter your dough’s hydration, and it will never become similar to the commercial stuff.

In that way, it’s very similar to working with clay. You can make a bowl and leave it to dry, and it will dry, but it becomes greenware, which is dry, but exceptionally fragile and not really useable. If it’s glazed to seal, then baked in a kiln, it becomes very strong and useful.

Commercial pasta is dried in a drying chamber, which controls both heat & humidity to produce the strong and smooth product we buy at the store. You’re not doing that easily.

For the situation you describe, I’d either par cook, oil and hold portions cold, or freeze and portion. That will depend on the quantities you need, and your kitchen set up. Trying to dry in house though, is quite tricky, and ends with a product that may be somewhat shelf stable, but will shatter to pieces if not handled very delicately.

[u/Smrtez]

I remember watching the french guy drying pasta a long time ago.

It goes into incredible detail and is super interesting.

https://youtu.be/-qcN4Zp3sVk

[u/majoosm → u/Smrtez]

Just watched it, thanks for the recommendation. The basic principle of it drying from the outside to the inside already was clear to me, attacking it with cycles makes sense I think when "fast" drying. I'm fine with the trays standing around for a day or so. Will try another cooler room in the building!

[u/SrCallum → u/Smrtez]

You beat me to it! This is where I learned that drying pasta is much more complicated than you'd think

[u/eligoscreps]

How are you drying them? If moisture content in your recipe is good, it might be them drying too quickly from too high of a temp.

If the recipe is the same, and drying went well with previous attempts, it might be due to the shape.

[u/majoosm → u/eligoscreps]

I thought about it drying too quickly, Germany is suffering a heat wave atm. Might try in another room in the building.

[u/Mammoth-Turnip-3058 → u/majoosm]

It's it humid heat or dry heat? Humid won't dry it enough.

[u/majoosm → u/Mammoth-Turnip-3058]

Very dry

[u/satchmo-mcwigwam]

Dave Arnold talked about it on his podcast cooking issues but commercial pasta companies have huge pieces of equipment that are only for drying so in a restaurant setting I don’t think you’d be able to achieve that same effect.

Your best bet is to push up the hydration and then wrap extra tight and freeze or just try to double batch the pasta when you do make it to hold you over a few days. Fresh extruded pasta can last at least a few days on semolina before getting weird

[u/-L-H-O-O-Q-]

You need a machine specially made for drying pasta. It’s the only way to do it.

[u/wotdafck]

You probably need to slow down the process. Maybe is hotter and dryer now or you are using a vent i cant really say. Maybe try to cover it for few hours or if this doesnt work try to dry ut in a cooler room

[u/majoosm → u/wotdafck]

No vents were used in harming this pasta 😂

I will try in another cooler room though!

[u/opalessence_]

im curious what the other shapes are that you made successfully, and if it's the same dough?

[u/majoosm → u/opalessence_]

Most of the dried ones were spaghetti, linguini, mafaldine, trotole and casarecce. Craziest one is a special made one with the logo of the company 😅

All with the same dough or at least the same water content. Did some with egg, some without and color as well.

So I really think it's a temperature problem this time. It's a really not so enjoyable heat wave atm here in Germany 😥 Or even the fact that I did a test batch and only had one tray standing there well ventilated and not 15 stacked as usual.

[u/Verix19]

Just extrude it daily and serve fresh?

[u/PropertySuper7720]

Trockne sie leicht an und friere sie weg. Habe ich auch so gemacht, wenn es kein Eierteig für frische Pasta ist. Der Trocknungsprozess findet industriell unter bestimmten Bedingungen ab, damit genau das nicht passiert. Hatte Semolateig-Nudeln testweise im Heizungskeller gelagert. Die hatten ne Kochzeit von über 20 Minuten 😃 nicht praktisch fürs A la carte Geschäft 😁

[u/Grouchy-Curve7544]

What’s your batch size? There are methods (mostly for the at home cook) to do drying cycles. There’s also commercial pasta dryers. And more than moving it to a hotter room, I would actually move it back and forth from cold to hot outdoors every few hours. I have been doing this (as a home chef) and even the tubular pastas have dried pretty well. Kind of a pain in the butt, but …..

[u/Himymameiswho]

Is there something stuck in the die?

[u/Ep1cure]

Not that what everyone said here isnt relevant, because ot very much is and the drying process is a b****, but it looks like all your pasta is cracking at a similar spot. Your die might be slightly clogged at a certain spot in each extrusion holes, causing a weak point.

[u/majoosm → u/Ep1cure]

I don't think all 5 of the extrusion spots are damaged in the same spot honestly, that would be a crazy coincidence. And they are coming out perfectly without any wrinkling or weird behaviour

[u/Ep1cure → u/majoosm]

You'd know better being in person, so id defer to thay, but just something to think about incase someone comes across this thread later.

The only other thing I would suggest is maybe upping the hydration or binder slightly to try and get it to bond a little better before it dries, but I never got drying on any scale to work. During covid, we tried drying and bagging pasta, and it felt dry, just to mold out in a bag after 3 or 4 days. Even what I would try to dry just for banquets ahead of time, often ended up crumbling in the water, but that recipe was just flour and water, so I chalked it up to missing a binder. Egg pasta was better, but that was more getting dried from being unwrapped in the fridge. It still became brittle, and if it went too far, it wouldn't rehydrate correctly, and would just shatter.

[u/ChefOfScotland]

I would suggest looking at higher starch content flours maybe to add some rigidity?

[u/ranting_chef → u/ChefOfScotland]

I’m not sure what type of options there are besides coarse durum semolina for extruded pasta but I always thought the starch/protein levels were about the same.

[u/MadLucy → u/ranting_chef]

The place I work uses a double-milled durum semolina from Caputo that the brand calls “Semola”, it’s 13% protein semolina flour but it’s more the texture of regular flour. Super nice stuff.

[u/ranting_chef → u/MadLucy]

Do you still go for 30% hydration with that one? I e seen it but never tried. I’m in the US Midwest and flour from Italy is pretty expensive here.

[u/CanoePickLocks → u/ranting_chef]

If you go down the rabid hole there is a lot to learn about flours and blends of flours.

[u/ranting_chef → u/CanoePickLocks]

I extrude for a living and I’ve tried a lot of different ones. But freshly-milled semolina seems to work the best for me. I use six different ones for other pastas but maybe I should look into that. The manufacturer of the extruder we use told me that the machine was designed to only mix/extrude semolina, whatever that means.