Afeltra Tortiglione Pasta

The tortiglione pasta is a typical format of the Neapolitan and Gragnano tradition, We use only grains of Italian origin, more precisely of the Tavoliere delle Puglie in the south of Italy. All groats have a coarse granulometry, allowing them to express their organoleptic properties at their best. In fact, although it takes longer times for the mixture, it reduces the damage of the starch granules and wheat proteins.In addition to the semolina, the water comes from the Lattari Mountains, it is the same that has been used for more than 400 years to produce the Gragnano pasta, the peculiar characteristics (low calcium, low residual fixed, balanced pH) make it particularly suitable for pasta making.The production follows the strict dictates of the specification of the "Pasta di Gragnano I.G.P."The mixture is passed into bronze molds, the dies, which, in addition to giving the dough a rough and rough surface, determine its shape. The mixture, pushed against the shaped holes of the dies, can thus take on the most disparate shapes, long or short, large or small. The dies as to be disciplined are strictly in bronze, because with this material the dough is more porous and rough, more suitable to combine with sauces and condiments, absorbing them, retaining them better and thus improving their tightness during cooking. Drying is the technologically more complex phase of the production process.Historically, this phase was carried out outdoors, on the street (where the long formats were laid out) or on the roofs of the houses (for short formats) or on the terraces, where the long sizes waved like sheets in the wind. The importance of the knowledge of the winds was fundamental: the master pasta makers said that "the macaroni are made with the “scirocco” and dry with the “tramontana". Gragnano at the beginning of the eighteenth century was like a big macaroni factory, pasta was dried everywhere, in all the streets and on all the roofs of the houses. Today the pasta is dried in our static cells and in them exactly the same procedure is reproduced that was used by the Afeltra pasta factory more than one hundred years ago, when outside the pasta factory in the historic Via Roma was put to dry our pasta. In this way also the urban planning of the buildings has been modified to better exploit the wind with strategically positioned constructions in order to create small bottlenecks or widening, in order to increase the speed of the air flows. The warm climate, barely humid and windy, due to the encounter of the Gulf of Naples breeze with that coming from the Lattari Mountains gave the pasta a unique drying, impossible to reproduce in other parts of the world.In our factory, the drying takes place in static cells and at low temperatures, at the most 50 degree's for a period of between 24 and 60 hours, a slower and gradual drying thus allows to preserve the quality of the pasta, as opposed to the pasta industrial (De Cecco, Garofalo, Liguori, Di Martino, Barilla), which is produced and dried very quickly, at high temperatures and in large quantities about 1000 quintals a day, in this way the semolina is almost "raped" and both the aesthetic characteristics and the organoleptic properties of the pasta are lost. After drying, the dough is stabilized at room temperature, always in the cells for about 12 hours. In all production phases, the experience and passion of master pasta makers is fundamental, combined with the use of technologically advanced machinery and careful and meticulous quality control allows us to achieve the results that are now under our eyes, but above all everyone's teeth. The next phase of the packaging is carried out partly by hand and partly by advanced machinery, It must be completed within 24 hours from the production of the pasta (to avoid loss of moisture).