Since my first post on
making fresh bigoli (here), I’ve
expanded my collection of bigoli dough
recipes. These recipes come from both classic Italian cookbooks (such as Ada
Boni’s Italian Regional Cooking
[1969] and Giuliano Bugialli’s Bugialli
on Pasta [1988]) and from new cookbooks (such as The Italian Academy of
Cuisine’s La Cucina – The Regional
Cooking of Italy [2009] and Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy’s The Geometry of Pasta [2010]). Still,
recipes for fresh bigoli remain rare
in English-language cookbooks. My hope is that as the cooking public’s interest
in Italian regional cuisine, especially pasta, continues to climb, and as the
Internet makes the previously hard-to-find torchio
pasta press readily available (here), we will see more recipes for fresh bigoli in new cookbooks.
And why not? Making fresh bigoli offers a number of advantages
over buying dried bigoli—if you can
find it—or using dry, whole-wheat spaghetti. Fresh bigoli has a firm yet chewy texture missing from dried pasta. Making
bigoli also gives you complete control
over how your pasta tastes.
Given that variations
abound in regional Italian cooking, it’s hardly surprising that the bigoli recipes I’ve collected contain a broad
range of flour options. Ada Boni’s recipe for fresh bigoli in her Italian Regional
Cooking calls exclusively for “all-purpose (plain) flour”. (The Italian
Academy of Cuisine’s recipe in La
Cucina’s also calls for 100% all-purpose flour.) Oretta Zanini De Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta describes bigoli’s ingredients as “[g]enerally
whole-wheat flour made from durum wheat, but sometimes soft-wheat flour….” Jacob
Kenedy’s bigoli recipe in The Geometry of Pasta has two
variations: one with 100% whole-wheat flour (for the “staunch traditionalist”) and
another with whole-wheat and a little added semola.
The Italian-language La Pasta [2010] from Slow Food Editore
contains seven recipes for fresh bigoli
using a range of farina di frumento (wheat
flour) from tipo 00 (highly refined flour) to farina integrale (ground whole-grain flour). What can you take from
this? Unless you’re a “staunch traditionalist” or just a dogmatist, experiment
freely and use whatever flour option tastes best to you.
I’ve tried a number of different ratios of whole-wheat to all-purpose flour to achieve a pasta that meets my taste. I hit upon the following dough recipe for bigoli because it has a distinctive yet balanced whole-wheat flavor. When processed through my Bottene torchio the dough transforms into a rough-textured noodle characteristic of pasta extruded from a bronze die. The following recipe serves 2.
- 125 grams Caputo tipo 00 flour
- 75 grams Giustos organic whole-wheat flour, fine
- 2 large eggs [approximately 120 grams]
1. Weigh out the flour,
mix them together and sift the flour blend into a heavy mixing bowl.
2. Make a well in the
flour and add the eggs. Beat the eggs with a fork and incorporate them into the
flour with the fork until a crumbly mixture forms. Clean the dough off your
fork and add it to the bowl.
3. Holding the bowl with
one hand, reach into the bowl with your other hand and continue to mix the
dough by hand. The goal is to incorporate all of the flour in the bowl into a
rough dough that holds together. (If this mixture is too dry and will not come
together, add a quick spritz or two of water from a spray bottle.)
4. Turn your dough onto a
clean work surface. Wash your hands to remove any dough before kneading.
5. Begin to knead the
dough ball by forcefully pushing it down and away from you with your palm’s
heel. Fold the dough back over itself toward you. Slightly turn the dough
counterclockwise, and knead again. Knead until the dough becomes quite firm
(generally between 10 to 12 minutes). The dough should weigh approximately 300
grams.
6. Wrap the dough in
plastic. Let the dough rest at room temperature for about 20 minutes.
7. Attach your torchio to a work surface and insert
your bigoli die. Unwrap the dough and
lightly dust it with flour. Roll the dough into a thick cylinder and slide this
into the torchio’s chamber. Insert
the torchio’s piston into the
machine’s chamber and turn the torchio’s
handle until the pasta extrudes from the die. Cut to your desired length—I aim
for 12 inches—and dust the cut pasta in a bowl containing flour to prevent
sticking. Place the floured bigoli on
a dishtowel. Continue turning the torchio
handle and cutting until the dough runs out.
To cook the pasta bring a
large pot of salted water to the boil. Add the fresh bigoli, stir the pasta and when the water returns to the boil, cook
for approximately 3 minutes. Taste to see if the pasta is ready. If so, drain
and add the bigoli to your ready
sauce and continue to cook for a minute or two so the pasta and sauce can marry.
