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In the Glossary of Sauces & Shapes (here),
Oretta Zanini De Vita and Maureen B. Fant describe fiorentini as a “short, squiggly factory-made pasta”. Based upon
this brief description, one might not expect much from this noodle in the
looks-department. Yet of all of the pastas featured in Sauces & Shapes, fiorentini
rates, in my opinion, as one of the most handsome. It can also handle a broad
range of sauces. Zanini De Vita and Fant pair the shape with a hearty ragù di carne. The Mozza Cookbook [2011] by Nancy Silverton with Matt Molina and Carolynn
Carreño contains a recipe for fiorentini with
a sauce of guanciale, tomato, and
spicy pickled peppers.
Dry fiorentini rarely appears on grocers’ shelves here in the US, so if
you want to try it, take to the web. As I write, Buon Italia (here)
sells the shape. Emiliomiti (here)
sells a bronze die for the torchio that produces twisting ribbons that look
like fiorentiti to my eye. Ask for
die 267 from the Blue Catalog.
I’ve made a lot of
extruded pasta, including fiorentini,
over the past few months. During this period, I used a 50-50 mixture of Central
Milling Organic Type 00 flour and Giusto Extra Fancy Durum flour. I am
experimenting with adding a touch more liquid to the flour. In the past, I used
75 grams of an egg mixture (typically a whole medium egg plus a medium egg
yolk) for 150 grams of flour. (This produces enough pasta to serve 2 as a main
course.) Of late, I’ve increased the amount of eggs for this flour blend from
75 to 77 grams. You need to make allowances for how your ingredients interact
on any given day, but I have found that these extra grams of liquid produce a
better-shaped noodle.
The other practice I now
employ: after mixing the dough in a standing mixer with a paddle, I form the
dough into a log rather than a disk. After an hour hydration period at room
temperature, I simply pop the dough right into the torchio and start cranking.