Soft Semolina Dough for a Torchio

Back in June of 2016 I shared a short video (here) by Vicky Bennison for her excellent Pasta Grannies project (www.pastagrannies.com). The video shows a Sardinian family using its torchio pasta press to make sos cannisones, a long tubular pasta. A family member mixes semolina and warm water to make a dough so soft that one can cut the pasta from a torchio with a smart karate chop. To keep the sos cannisones from sticking to each other while drying, the Sardinians separately lay each piece of pasta on a linen sheet draped over a large wicker basket.

Since purchasing my torchio from EmilioMiti in 2010, I have developed many different pasta dough recipes for the torchio. During this time, I never intentionally made a soft dough like the one featured in the Pasta Grannies’ sos cannisones video. Based upon my experience, using a soft dough in a torchio risks creating a sticky pasta mess, especially when extruding a long, thin noodle. Most of the torchio dough recipes on my blog make a pasta that extrudes with minimal sticking.

I recently rewatched the sos cannisones video and curiosity got the best of me: Why might these Sardinians opt for a super soft dough? I retired to my Pasta Lab to try to answer this question by making a soft semolina and water dough for my torchio. I used the following recipe, which serves 2 to 3 depending upon appetites.

1. Put 150 grams of Central Milling Organic semolina into the bowl of a standing mixer equipped with a mixing paddle. Fill a spouted cup with 68 grams of warm water (115°F).

2. Turn on the mixer and set it at its lowest speed. Very—and this is key—slowly dribble the warm water into the fine semolina. Add just a few grams of water at a time and patiently wait between each small pour of water to allow the mixer to incorporate the water into the semolina. From start to finish, this step takes me about 9 minutes, give or take. Slowly adding water helps the semolina to completely hydrate.

3. When the dough comes together in the mixer’s bowl, turn off the mixer and form the dough, which should feel quite soft, into a log shape that will fit into the torchio’s chamber. Wrap the shaped dough in plastic and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

I cannot say with certainty what bronze die the Sardinians employ to make their sos cannisones, but I think they use a gargati die. I decided to make 8-inch long tubes, so I placed an inverted bowl 8-inches from the bottom of the press to act as a cutting guide.

4. Unwrap the dough, place it in the torchio’s chamber, set the piston into the chamber and turn the handle. Cut the pasta at the desired length and carefully place each piece of pasta on a linen towel, making sure that each one does not touch its neighbor. The pasta should feel tacky, but not unworkably sticky. Let the pasta dry, turning occasionally, at room temperature for about 2 to 3 hours.

These thick, hollow pasta tubes take time to cook. Add them into a pot of boiling saltwater and start tasting after about 7 minutes. I boiled my last batch for almost 9 minutes. As is my custom, I add my cooked pasta to its sauce and cook the two together until the sauce almost disappears.

And speaking of sauce, by watching the Pasta Grannie video, one learns that these Sardinians top their sos cannisones with a simple tomato sauce. I went for a completely different sauce: lamb, artichoke and pecorino cheese.

I came away from my experiment with the following conclusion: A torchio-extruded pasta made with a soft semolina and warm water dough has an excellent chewy texture. In my opinion, this texture alone warrants the extra efforts needed when extruding and drying pasta made with this soft dough. Further, as expected, it takes much less force to turn the torchio when using a soft as opposed to a dry dough.

I tried a soft dough multiple times with a number of different bronze dies. Personally, I prefer the pasta from a fiorentini die (here) to that from the gargati. I like the fiorentini’s thinner wall thickness and the pasta only takes about 4 minutes to cook.

Unless you commit to heavily dusting your pasta with flour while extruding, I do not recommend a very soft dough to make a long, thin, string-like shape. I tried this soft semolina and water dough using a bigoli die—without dusting—and I had A Huge Mess on my hands. The bigoli strands glommed on to each other, reminding me why I worked so hard to develop relatively non-sticky dough for my torchio. Because Bottene’s Model B Torchio allows one to change dies mid-extrusion, I simply balled up the bigoli mess, added the pasta back to the press, swapped out my bigoli die with a fiorentini die, and proceeded to make a fresh batch of fiorentini. Pretty neat.

Cleaning Torchio Pasta Dies

My Bottene Model B torchio pasta press arrived with two bronze dies to make bigoli (here) and gargarti (here), Venetian variations of spaghettoni and sedani, respectively. Although the torchio originated in the Veneto, the press accommodates a myriad of bronze dies allowing you to extrude classic pasta shapes from across Italy, such as gramigna (here) from Emilia-Romagna or tonnarelli (here) from Lazio.

Search the WWW (or explore this site) and you will find plenty of recipes to make dough suitable for a hand-cranked torchio. You will not, however, find much information on the Internet on how to clean the torchio’s pasta dies. Pasta shops and restaurants that keep pasta machine dies in regular production often store their dies in plain water or water spiked with vinegar (approximately 15 ml per liter of water). Whether you use plain or acidic water, every pastaio I queried recommends changing the soaking water every day.

Although soaking dies makes sense when one keeps a die in constant use, this practice does not work for me and probably not many other home cooks. Here’s my die cleaning routine (which I do not represent as the standard of care). First, after extruding pasta with my torchio, I remove the die and pick out as much of the dough left in the die that I can using a toothpick or other similar small wooden skewer. I can entirely clean certain simple dies, such as my bigoli and gargarti dies, by using a toothpick.

Survey a range of pasta dies and you will notice that many dies have inserts (i.e., bronze plugs that seat into holes bored into the die blank). These inserts, some with open backs while other partially enclosed, do the work of manipulating the dough into the pasta’s shape using surfaces, ridges and/or pins. Certain dies, depending upon their insert’s configuration, take a lot of work to clean. Again, I usually start with a toothpick or small wooden skewer to remove as much dough as possible. I then soak the die in lukewarm soapy water for a couple of hours or overnight. I might again try to pick out more dough by hand and soak the die again. I next use a Waterpik that I purchased to clean dies. I find cleaning dies with a Waterpik yields good results, but also makes quite a damp mess. Spray goes everywhere.

Some dies are so difficult to clean that they need multiple soaks and take a couple of passes with the Waterpik to dislodge all the small pieces of dough that become trapped in their inserts. Nevertheless, the soak and Waterpik method remains the best way that I have found to clean certain complex dies (e.g., lumache, perciatelli and 23mm rigatoni).

Personally, I find cleaning bronze pasta dies A Total Bore. I’ll admit it: I may not buy a die if the die looks like it will be too difficult to clean. Call me lazy, but if a die involves too much work to clean, I am simply less likely to use it. I’m looking at you, perciatelli.

Gargati

I purchased a torchio pasta press principally to make bigoli, a long, thick spaghettoni most closely associated with the Veneto region. The press (here) came with two bronze dies: one to make bigoli and another to make gargati, a short tubular pasta. As I worked with the torchio and acquired a range of bronze dies I began to experiment with different dough recipes. I wondered if an egg yolk rich dough would work in a torchio. (Most of the dough recipes that I came across for the torchio only used an egg or two; all called for a hard, firm dough.)

Happily, the experiment worked. Although a yolk-rich dough starts out sticky, it becomes quite firm and dry after a long kneading. If you are interested in trying a different dough in your torchio, here’s one recipe:

• 9 medium egg yolks
• 150 grams Caputo tipo 00 flour

1) Weigh out the flour and sift it into a heavy mixing bowl.

2) Make a well in the flour and add the eggs yolks. Beat the yolks 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 20 to 25 minutes). The dough should weigh approximately 290 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 die of choice. 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 and place the pasta into a bowl containing flour. Lightly coat the pasta to prevent sticking. Continue turning and cutting until the dough runs out.

To date I’ve tried this dough with a gargati die. Although it’s not a traditional dough for the torchio, your pasta will have a wonderful, firm bite.

If 9 egg yolks seem too much for your taste, you can reduce the number of yolks to 6 (while still using 150 grams of flour). If you use 6 yolks, knead your dough for 15 to 20 minutes. (With fewer yolks the dough starts out fairly dry and needs less time to firm up.)

I enjoy this pasta with an artichoke sauce. It would also work with a rich offal sauce. The recipe serves 4 as a starter or 3 as a main course.