Buckwheat Bigoli

In June of 2020, A Serious Bunburyist turns 10 years old. I conceived of this website as a place where I would share information about pasta-making, review new cookbooks and memorialize some of my favorite recipes. In my inaugural post I shared a recipe to make a regional Italian pasta called bigoli in a bronze Venetian pasta press called a torchio da bigoli (here). Over the years I’ve posted a number of different bigoli recipes on this site. To start 2020, I want to share another one, this time a dark bigoli version made with buckwheat flour.

Dark Bigoli (Bigoli Scuri)

Oretta Zanini De Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta (2009) lists bigoli’s ingredients as “[g]enerally whole-wheat flour made from durum wheat, but sometimes soft-wheat flour, water, and salt, and often duck or hen eggs.”  Zanini De Vita makes no reference to buckwheat flour, but she notes in her remarks that bigoli “…was always dark until not long ago because peasant women made it from whole-wheat flour.” 

In Bugialli on Pasta (1988), the late Italian food historian and teacher Giuliano Bugialli writes “[o]riginally, dark bigoli probably were made using buckwheat flour, since the grain was once plentiful in the Tre Veneti. (Today, the region is more commonly known as Friuli-Venezia Giulia.) But earlier in this century the Italian government began to require that certified commercial pasta be made only from durum wheat flour, and soon even in the home whole-wheat flour came to replace the buckwheat.”

As Bugialli points out, regional Italian pasta makers were—and still are—naturally opportunistic and used available ingredients. In the Encyclopedia’s Entry No. 200 for Pizzoccheri, Zanini De Vita writes “[t]he cultivation of buckwheat in the alpine valleys from Lombardy to Trentino was already widespread toward the fourteenth century, especially in Carnia….” Italy’s Carnia province lies approximately 40 miles northeast of the Veneto region. Whether buckwheat is the original bigoli flour or not, one can easily imagine buckwheat pasta dough finding its way into a Venetian torchio.

Buckwheat

Buckwheat, a flower seed and not a true wheat grass grain, presents challenges to the pasta maker because buckwheat flour contains no gluten. Buckwheat’s characteristics differ by variety, but generally its seeds have a very dark, bitter-tasting outer hull that surrounds a lighter-colored triangular kernel (aka groat). After de-hulling the seeds, mills grind the groats to make buckwheat flour.

Most buckwheat noodle recipes, whether to make Italian pasta or Japanese soba, blend wheat and buckwheat flour to strengthen the dough. In Cooking By Hand (2003), Paul Bertolli writes that buckwheat flour “…has a forceful taste all its own, though the necessity of mixing it with a greater proportion of white flour to strengthen the dough structure also serves to tone down its flavor.” Bertolli’s buckwheat flour blend in Cooking By Hand is approximately 30% buckwheat flour and 70% extra fancy semolina (aka extra fancy durum).

In my experience, extruding a buckwheat dough (e.g., in a torchio) permits the pasta maker to reduce the amount of wheat flour used when making buckwheat pasta without detrimentally affecting the dough’s structure. Exceptions to this general rule exist, especially if making pasta with a coarse, stoneground buckwheat flour containing flecks of hull. However, using a torchio to extrude buckwheat pasta generally allows the pasta maker to focus on taste and texture and worry a little less about dough strength.

Over the last three years I have made buckwheat pasta with buckwheat flour from a number of sources. I used my KoMo grain mill to grind fresh buckwheat flour from store-bought groats. I tried different buckwheat flour from mills here in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. My favorite homemade buckwheat pasta uses a Japanese Ni-Hachi style soba flour (80% buckwheat and 20% type 00 wheat flour) that I bought on-line from Anson Mills in South Carolina. I enjoy the flavor and texture of pasta made from this finely ground blend.

The following recipe, which serves 2, uses Anson Mills’s soba flour without adding any additional wheat flour. The first few times I tried this soba flour to make bigoli with my torchio, I added small amounts of extra wheat flour believing I needed to strengthen the dough. I found adding additional wheat flour unnecessary. Anson Mills’s buckwheat-rich blend works just fine as is with a torchio.

1) Put 115 grams of Anson Mills Ni-Hachi style soba flour into the bowl of a standing mixer equipped with a mixing paddle.

2) Put 1 whole large egg and 1 egg yolk into a glass beaker and beat the egg mixture together.

3) Turn on the mixer and set it at its lowest speed. Very—and this is important—slowly add small amounts of the beaten egg mixture into the flour. Patiently wait between each small pour to allow the mixer to incorporate the egg into the flour. From start to finish, the step of adding the egg mixture to form the dough takes me about 10 minutes, more or less.

You will probably not need to add all of the egg mixture to get the proper consistency for this particular pasta dough. On average I use approximately 58 to 59 grams of the egg mixture for 115 grams of Anson Mills’s soba flour. The dough should not come completely together in the mixer bowl and will look crumbly. I point this out because it is very easy to over-hydrate a buckwheat-rich pasta dough and a sticky dough can cause a mess when extruding a long, thin noodle like bigoli. Here’s a picture of the ready dough in my mixer bowl.

4) Remove the bowl from the mixer and reach into the bowl to bring the dough together with your hand. Form the dough into a log shape that will fit into the torchio’s chamber. The dough will look and feel dry, but don’t worry, it will soften as it hydrates in step 5, below. 

5) Very tightly wrap the dough log twice in plastic film and let the dough rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. Tightly wrapping the dough helps to hydrate the dough.

6) After 30 minutes, unwrap the dough, assemble your torchio with a bigoli die and place the dough in the torchio’s chamber.  Set the piston into the chamber and turn the handle. Cut the pasta at your desired length. (I aim for approximately 8-inch long noodles.) The extruded bigoli should feel just a little tacky, but not unworkably sticky.

Once cooked, this dark buckwheat bigoli boasts a pronounced toasty, almost nutty flavor. Many traditional Northern Italian recipes for buckwheat pasta (e.g., bigoli, blecs, grumi di grano saraceno and pizzoccheri) call for less buckwheat and include milk and butter in addition to eggs. These ingredients, although delicious, often mask buckwheat’s unique flavor.

If the idea of a buckwheat-extruded pasta appeals to you, feel free to try different buckwheat blends and torchio dies to create a pasta that has your desired taste and texture. I like making a buckwheat version of fiorentini (here). Or consider using a spaghetti quadri die (here) to create a square, soba-like noodle.

Finally, I cannot end this post in good conscience without providing this caveat: Extruding a dry dough will put stress on a torchio and, after extruding your pasta, you may find it difficult to remove the die ring nut by hand. I solve this problem by employing a rubber mallet to gently tap the die ring nut clockwise to loosen it.

Bolting Flour for Pasta Making

I wrote (here) about the benefits of using freshly-milled flour to make pasta. In Cooking by Hand (2003), Paul Bertolli writes, “[f]lour used very soon after milling produces the best, most fragrant pasta.” To realize this potential, the pasta maker needs to consider the interplay of bran and gluten when making pasta. Bertolli recommends blending whole-grain flour with refined flour to mitigate the effect of whole-grain flour’s bran on the gluten fabric of pasta dough.  

Another way to reduce the impact of bran when making pasta with whole-grain flour is by bolting the milled flour. Bolting means passing whole-grain flour through a sieve to remove bran. This post generally explores bolting, introduces a bolting process that I use when making fresh pasta, and shares a pasta dough recipe that uses 100% freshly bolted flour.

Bolting Flour

Milling wheat berries produces whole-grain flour comprised of bran, germ and endosperm. A number of interrelated factors will determine the amount of material that bolting removes from whole-grain flour, including (1) mill-type and its setting, and (2) sieve-type and its specifications. Commercial millers employ sophisticated equipment to remove (or add) exact amounts of bran and/or germ from flour during the milling process. Home millers cannot match the level of precision of commercial millers. Instead, expect home bolting to catch material (i.e., bran, germ and/or endosperm) too large to pass through a sieve. Fortunately, this lack of exactitude poses few problems for a pasta maker if she takes a few precautions.

Successfully making pasta with home-milled, bolted flour depends upon an appreciation of the interplay among grain selection, mill settings and bolting equipment. Failing to consider these factors increases the likelihood of making a weak dough and pasta that breaks when cut and/or cooked. Although one can mask the impact of a weak dough by choosing a more forgiving pasta shape (e.g., creating cavatelli instead of making tagliolini or tagliatelle), knowing the interaction of grain, mill and sieve will help you to create the pasta you envision.

Grain Selection Because home-bolted flour will likely contain some amount of bran, knowing a grain’s protein content helps to understand how the dough will respond to different levels of bran and the likely elasticity and plasticity of the pasta dough. This information informs what type of pasta shape to make and how the pasta will taste.  For example, if I want to mill a soft wheat variety, such as White Sonora wheat berries (available from Hayden Flour Mills), I will bolt the flour with a series of fine sieves to remove more bran. Because soft wheat varieties contain less protein, removing additional bran helps to keep the pasta’s gluten fabric intact thereby mitigating the possibility that the pasta will fracture. 

I might also decide to blend soft wheat flour with a hard spring wheat or durum wheat variety with a higher protein content to increase the pasta dough’s strength. This decision allows me to make a pasta shape that might not be as successful if I only used a bolted soft wheat flour.

Mill Settings Understanding the exchange between a mill’s setting and bolting sieves also informs what you can expect from your flour and, ultimately, your pasta. 

I own a KoMo Fidibus Classic grain mill (here). By turning the mill’s grain hopper, I can adjust the mill’s grind from Fein (fine) to Grob (course). When bolting flour for pasta making, I keep the mill’s grind indicator set on the mill’s left miter joint. Grain milled at this setting and then bolted with the test sieves (described below) produces a fragrant, finely-textured flour.

Although it might seem counterintuitive at first, too fine a mill setting will produce a gritty flour because small particles of bran can pass through fine sieves. In my experience, a very finely milled flour, even when bolted through a No. 40 and No. 50 sieve, feels gritty when compared to a slightly coarser flour bolted through the same sieves. Because each mill is different, experiment with various mill settings and sieves keeping in mind that bolting a slightly course flour may result in a more refined (i.e., bran-free) finished flour.

Bolting Equipment I began bolting flour using a household OXO mesh strainer. Over time I invested in a No. 40 and No. 50 stainless steel test sieve made by Gilson Company. Both sieves measure 8-inches in diameter and are 2-inches deep (i.e., full height). The No. 40 sieve has an opening size of 425 micrometers and the No. 50 sieve has smaller openings of 300 micrometers. I decided to invest in a No. 40 and No. 50 after reading an aside in Marc Vetri’s Mastering Pasta (2015). He writes that farro flour bolted through a No. 35 sieve is “a little finer than semolina”. Armed with this knowledge I concluded that I could produce workable pasta flour using a No. 40 and/or No. 50 sieve. 

Through experience I know that 100 grams of wheat berries milled with my KoMo’s grind indicator set on the mill’s left miter joint and then bolted with my No. 40 test sieve will yield ±60 grams of flour. If I re-bolt this ±60 grams of flour through my finer No. 50 test sieve, I will catch approximately 20 grams of additional material resulting in ±40 grams of flour.

Knowing these extraction rates allows me to calculate the amount of wheat berries that I need to produce the desired amount of bolted flour with almost no waste of grain or excess bolted flour. But more importantly, I know through experience that flour bolted through a No. 40 sieve performs differently when compared to a more refined flour bolted through both a No. 40 and a No. 50 sieve. Because flour bolted through a No. 40 sieve will, based upon the flour’s grind, contain more bran compared to flour further bolted through a No. 50 sieve, the home pasta maker needs to carefully consider her grain selection, dough hydration and final pasta shape when using a 100% No. 40 bolted flour.

Armed with some basic bolting knowledge and through experimentation you can decide, by adjusting grain, grind and sieve, how you want your pasta to smell and taste. The universe of possibilities increases further if you blend home-bolted flour with a commercially refined flour to zero in on the characteristics that you want to achieve in your pasta. More on this in future posts.

Technique through a Recipe

Experimenting with your choice of grain(s), mill and sieve(s) provides the best instruction on how to mill and bolt flour at home to make fresh pasta. Here’s my process. I share weights, but keep in mind that the variables of grain and grind might yield very different results in your kitchen.

1) Place a medium-sized pouring bowl on a scale, tare the scale and put 330 grams of grain into the bowl. I recommend starting out with a high protein content grain. In this recipe I am using Bluebird Grain Farm’s Organic Methow Hard Red wheat berries.

2) Adjust your grain mill to a fine—but not its finest—setting. On my KoMo Fidibus Classic mill, I set the grind indicator near the top left mitre joint of the face of the mill’s housing.

3) Place a clean sheet of parchment paper (approximately 13” x 15”) on your work surface under the mill’s spout. The paper needs to be large enough to catch the flour that falls from the bolting sieve(s).

4) Put a full height No. 40 sieve on top of the parchment paper under the mill’s spout. Turn on the mill and add 330 grams of wheat berries. While the mill processes the flour into the sieve, replace the pouring bowl onto the scale, which should read zero.

5) After the mill finishes grinding the flour, lift the sieve with one hand and lightly tap the sieve against the heel of your other hand so that the flour moves back and forth across the screen’s face and flour gently falls onto the parchment paper.

As you bolt the flour, notice that the flour in the sieve will slowly change color and texture. The flour in the sieve will look darker as the screen retains more bran.

Also note the color of the collected flour collecting on the parchment paper. Stop bolting when the flour begins to slightly darken and the remaining material in the sieve is coarse compared to the bolted flour.

6) Pick up the parchment sheet on either side and carefully pour the sifted flour into the bowl on the scale. In my experience, 330 grams of wheat berries milled and sifted as described above produces ±170 grams of flour.

7) Replace the parchment sheet onto the work surface and put the full height No. 50 sieve on top of the sheet. Pour the ±170 grams of flour in the bowl into the sieve and replace the bowl onto the scale. Bolt the flour through the No. 50 sieve onto the parchment paper. Again, the material in the sieve will slowly darken as the flour makes its way through the screen, leaving bran and other material behind.

8) Carefully lift the sheet and pour the sifted flour into the bowl on the scale. You should have approximately 115 grams of flour. Adjust the flour to 115 grams by adding refined flour or removing sifted flour.

9) Add 1 whole large egg and 1 egg yolk (together weighing approximately 76 to 77 grams) to the 115 grams of freshly sifted flour. Knead by hand for 8 to 10 minutes until the pasta dough is smooth. The dough will feel quite firm during kneading, but will soften as it hydrates, wrapped in plastic wrap, for 30 to 40 minutes at room temperature.

It may take a while to get the feel of working with freshly milled and bolted flour. The payoff from using freshly milled flour is a delicious pasta with a firm bite and heavenly aroma. To appreciate these qualities, simply dress the cooked pasta with a good butter and freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

A quick note on cleaning the Gilson sieves. After pouring out the bran, I use a stiff brush to whisk the face and sides of the screens. After brushing you might still find small pieces of material lodged in the screens. Fastidious millers can use fine needles to clear away this detritus.

Home-milling opens up a world of flour possibilities to pasta makers. Take a look the grain offerings from Bluebird Grain Farm, Hayden Flour Mills and Montana Flour & Grain. I buy Kamut from Montana Flour and White Sonora from Hayden. Bluebird sells exquisite organic hard white and red wheat as well as einkorn. 

Straw & Hay Gramigna

Leafing through Michael White’s Classico e Moderno (Random House, 2013), I came across a version of Gramigna con salsiccia that caught my attention. In the recipe’s introduction, White writes: “Befitting its name, “little weeds,” gramigna is made both in yellow and green versions, the latter with a spinach dough, often served together.” The idea of a paglia e fieno (“straw and hay”) version of gramigna intrigued me. Authentic? I pulled my copy of Oretta Zanini De Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta (University of California Press, 2009) off the shelf and looked up gramigna. Sure enough, Zanini De Vita covers the straw and hay variation: “The factory-made version varies from small to medium size, in the shape of a tiny worm, and is often found in a paglia e fieno version.” I posted an egg dough version of gramigna (here), but never attempted a green pasta dough for the torchio. No time like the present.

I developed the following green dough recipe using spinach, but nettles, basil, parsley, kale or Swiss chard should also work. In Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (Knopf, 1992), Marcella Hazen advocates finely chopping blanched then well-dried spinach “with a knife, but not in a food processor which draws out too much moisture.” Giuliano Bugialli, in his updated The Fine Art of Italian Cooking (Random House, 1989) also makes his green dough with finely chopped spinach. In Cooking by Hand (Potter, 2003), Paul Bertolli makes his green pasta with a purée of spinach or young nettles using either a mortar and pestle or a food processor. I experimented with puréed, finely chopped and pounded spinach. Each type worked just fine. Pasta made with puréed spinach looks uniformly green. Finely chopped spinach produced a slightly lighter, speckled green pasta.

The following recipe make approximately 250 grams of green pasta dough suitable for a torchio pasta press.

60g stemmed spinach leaves

80g Central Milling Organic Type 00 Flour/11.2% protein

80g Central Milling Organic Extra Fancy Durum Flour/15%+ protein

2g fine kosher salt

whole egg, approximately 50g (without shell)

egg yolk, approximately 20g

water

1. Wash the stemmed spinach leaves—multiple times if necessary—to completely remove any dirt and grit. Bring a sauce pan of salted water to a boil. Cook the spinach for a minute or two. Transfer the spinach into a bowl of cold salted water. Once the spinach cools, remove it and drain well. Squeeze the spinach until it is mostly dry. Purée the blanched spinach with a food processor or immersion blender. Alternatively, finely chop the spinach with a knife. Put aside 17 grams (approximately 1 tablespoon) of puréed spinach to make the pasta dough. Use the remaining spinach in another dish so as not to be wasteful.

2. Sift the flours into the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the salt. Using a paddle attachment, mix together the flours and salt.

3. Place a mixing glass on a scale. Tare the scale and crack a medium-sized egg into the glass. The white and yolk should weigh approximately 50 grams, give or take. Crack another egg and add its yolk to the mixing glass, bringing the weight of the eggs to somewhere around 70 grams or so. Add the 17 grams of spinach purée to the eggs. The goal is to create an egg and spinach solution that weighs 91 grams. If the mixture weighs less than 91 grams, then add water to bring the weight up to 91 grams. If the mixture weighs more than 91 grams, remove the overage and reserve in case you need more liquid to make the dough. Use a hand whisk to beat the egg and spinach mixture.

4. With the stand mixer running on low speed, slowly pour the egg and spinach mixture into the mixing bowl in small batches. After adding all of the egg and spinach mixture, continue to mix the dough for about 2 to 3 minutes. You may need to add a little bit more liquid to create a dough with the proper consistency. The dough should look clumpy (see following photo). The finished dough should hold together when squeezed.

5. Remove the bowl from the mixer and add any dough on the paddle to the mixing bowl. Using your hand, bring the dough together into a large ball in the mixing bowl. Knead the dough in the bowl or on a work surface for approximately 30 seconds. Don’t worry if the dough feels hard and is difficult to knead. The dough will soften as it rests. Form the dough into a log narrow enough to ultimately slide into the torchio’s chamber. Tightly wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, insert the dough into the torchio and crank away! After extruding, let the pasta dry at room temperature for a couple of hours.

A few notes and observations. I use a flour mixture containing 50% extra fancy durum flour in order to add strength to the dough. I worried that the spinach purée might compromise the dough’s plasticity without the benefit of the durum flour’s extra gluten. I like how the 50/50 flour blend performed and tasted.

To make my yellow “straw” pasta, I created another 250 grams of egg dough sans spinach. I used the same 50/50 flour blend adding cream and extra egg whites in place of the spinach purée. Together the green and yellow pasta weighed 500 grams—just over a pound—serving 4 to 6 depending upon appetites.

I tried my paglia e fieno gramigna with a number of different white sauces. I made a cabbage and sausage sauce from a recipe in Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy’s The Geometry of Pasta (Boxtree, 2010). Kenedy braises sausage and cabbage in equal parts chicken stock and milk creating a sauce that tastes rich without being heavy.

My favorite sauce turned out to be a variation of Gramigna al ragù di salsiccia (here) wherein I switched out the tomato purée for a milk/chicken stock mixture. Try it and see what you think.

Feel free to experiment with the green dough using different bronze dies. I made a green rigatoni that worked well in a light cream sauce with pancetta and peas dusted with Parmesan.

Home-Milled Flour for Pasta

Since buying a KoMo Fidibus Classic grain mill last summer, I have purchased bags of different types of wheat berries and milled quite a bit of flour to make fresh pasta. In Cooking by Hand (2003), Paul Bertolli discusses the importance of making pasta with quality flour. He writes: “Pasta in its simplest form is grain moistened with water. Water, added directly or contributed by eggs, has little effect on the flavor of flour other than to help convey it, and eggs, which are themselves composed of water, play an understated if noticeable role in the taste of pasta made from them. Flour is the essence of pasta, all the more reason to consider its selection seriously.” (Emphasis added.) Bertolli continues and, to my mind, puts forth the best reason why a pasta maker should consider purchasing a grain mill to make flour: “Flour used very soon after milling produces the best, most fragrant pasta.”

Marc Vetri puts “very soon” into context in his 2015 cookbook entitled Mastering Pasta: “As soon as you crack a wheat berry, its flavor and aroma begin to dissipate. Within two days of grinding wheat berries into flour, nearly half of the flavorful oils—as well as many of the healthful nutrients—will oxidize. Within three days, 90 percent of the volatile flavor compounds in the flour will have been simply lost to the air.” Grinding grain at home assures fragrant, fresh flour. Home milling also opens up a world of possibilities by allowing the pasta maker to completely control a noodle’s flavor and texture.

Wheat varieties have different qualities that lend themselves to certain uses. The amount and quality of protein in a wheat berry determines if its flour better suits a soft biscuit or an extruded, dried pasta. When buying wheat, you will often find berry varieties described by color, hardness and season. You can select white or red; soft or hard; and spring or winter wheat. A pasta maker can create excellent fresh pasta with a broad range of modern and heritage wheat varieties. Ancient grains, such as spelt, farro and Khorasan wheat, also make excellent pasta flour. Buying a grain mill allows you to experiment with these berries and make different tasting pasta.

This post will briefly examine the how and why one might blend whole-grain flour (i.e., flour without any bran or germ removed) with refined flour (i.e. flour with its bran or germ removed). I discuss bolting (or sifting) whole-grain flour to remove different percentages of bran and germ when making fresh pasta (here).

Blending Flour

Paul Bertolli’s Cooking by Hand contains 14 different pasta dough recipes. In a number of these recipes, Bertolli recommends blending freshly milled whole-grain flour with a refined flour. He writes: “Because whole-grain flour contains bran, which ruptures the gluten fabric, it must be ‘cut’ with white flour to improve the integrity of the dough.” When describing the characteristics of hard red winter wheat, Bertolli explains that although “it makes a very fragrant, course flour…[it]…must be blended with at least an equal amount of white flour in order to make pasta that does not fracture when extended and then cooked.”

The careful reader recognizes that Bertolli states “whole-grain flour…must be “cut” with white flour to improve the integrity of the dough.” (Emphasis added.) One can certainly use whole-grain flour straight from the mill to make fresh pasta without adding white flour. However, depending on your grain selection and mill grind, the pasta made with whole-grain flour will likely lack elasticity and plasticity (i.e., the ability to take and hold a shape). These qualities may not matter if you want to create a rustic, flat noodle. If so, 100 percent whole-grain flour may suit your needs. However, if you want to make a less rough and/or shaped pasta, then you will need to consider how to mitigate the impact of the grain’s bran (and, to a lesser extent, its germ) in your milled whole-grain flour.

Bertolli’s recipe for Farro Flour Pasta evidences his approach of blending to maintain the taste and aroma of whole-grain pasta without suffering some of its structural drawbacks. When he wrote Cooking by Hand in 2003, the market for specialty grain flours differed from what consumers can purchase today in 2017. In his Farro Flour Pasta recipe, Bertolli writes: “If you own your own grain mill, you may wish to grind your own farro flour, which presently is available only in whole form.” Now one can buy milled-to-order organic farro flour online. Bluebird Grain Farm in Washington State currently sells two different varieties of farro flour: einkorn (also known as farro piccolo) and emmer (aka farro medio). However, if you own a grain mill, farro pasta benefits from the taste and aroma of just milled flour. Here’s Bertolli’s recipe for Farro Flour Pasta for 4.

5 ounces whole farro, freshly milled

5 ounces Extra Fancy semolina

4 ounces cool water

Place the farro and semolina flour in a bread bowl and make a well in the center. Add water to the well and stir with a fork to combine. When the dough begins to form a shaggy mass, reach into the bowl with your stronger hand and alternately squeeze and push down the dough with your palm. Press any loose bits of flour into the mass. When the dough feels tacky and fully incorporated, transfer it to a clean, lightly floured surface and knead it for 4 to 5 minutes, or until it loses its surface moisture, is a uniform color, and springs back when depressed. Wrap the dough in plastic and allow it to hydrate for at least 1 hour before rolling.

Bertolli writes that “farro makes pasta the color of caffè latte with a subtle wheat taste.” This pasta also boasts a pleasant chewiness. And, for the record, freshly milled farro flour smells intoxicating.

A few notes. I like to work with grams so I convert ounces to grams when I make this dough. Five ounces equals approximately 142 grams; four ounces equals about 114 grams.

Some experts recommend freezing grain before milling because they believe the resulting flour smells and tastes better, and further, provides health benefits. In Mastering Pasta, Marc Vetri quotes Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills on this subject: “Milling temperature determines how flavor develops in flour. If viable grain is milled cold, the resultant flour retains fresh milled flavors and is considered ‘live’ flour because the biostructure of the viable grain is retained in cold milling.” I have also read that freezing grain may cause the grain’s bran to shatter which, in turn, can further impact a dough’s gluten fabric. I remain reluctant to go too far down this particular rabbit hole because so many variables affect one’s analysis: Type of grain; grain temperature; mill-type/technology; mill speed; grain feed rate; impact upon bolted vs whole-grain flour; etc. If I come across milling information that materially informs my pasta making process, I will report back.  

So, to prepare for milling, I first weigh out my grain. I have made Bertolli’s Farro Flour Pasta with both whole-grain einkorn from Bluebird Grain Farm and with farro piccolo from Anson Mills. I adjust the grind on my KoMo Fidibus Classic grain mill to Fein (fine) with the round grind marker 4 clicks to the left of the unit’s top left miter joint. From my experience, 142 grams of farro grain produces 142 grams of whole-wheat farro flour.

Although Bertolli’s recipe calls for hand mixing the dough, I have also made this dough in a Kitchen Aid standing mixer using a paddle attachment. If you opt for this method—which I prefer because I can gradually add water and gauge how the dough develops—add the farro and semolina flour to the mixer’s bowl, turn the machine to stir and very slowly add the water to create the dough. When making this dough, I found that I need to add just a bit more water—maybe a gram or two—than Bertolli recommends. In general, freshly milled whole-grain flour absorbs more liquid than store-bought flour because of its bran. When adding additional water to finish a dough, I suggest using a spray bottle filled with water so as to spritz just enough liquid to bring the dough together. This farro dough softens considerably during its one hour hydration, so use a light hand when adding additional moisture.

Finally, note that Bertolli blends freshly milled farro flour with Extra Fancy semolina (aka Extra Fancy durum). Farro’s low gluten benefits from a partnership with a wheat flour that contains high gluten levels. (The same holds true for other low gluten grains such as rye or with buckwheat seed, which has no gluten.) The pasta maker quickly learns that she needs to consider the quality of gluten in the grain milled when making pasta dough. For example, if you want to use a whole-grain soft white wheat, your dough may benefit by adding Extra Fancy durum or some other high gluten wheat flour. However, if you decide to bolt your soft white flour, adding a high gluten flour may not be as critical (because the dough will become more workable after removing bran and germ from the milled flour).

In summary, one approach to making fresh pasta with freshly milled whole-grain flour is to blend the whole-grain flour with a refined flour. Consider using a high-gluten refined flour to blend when using whole-grain flour milled from a grain with low gluten levels, such as farro or rye. Start by experimenting with a 50/50 blend of whole-grain and refined flour. 

Spinach Soup

When I started writing A Serious Bunburyist, I penciled out a list of five favorite recipes that I wanted to cover: Fergus Henderson’s Beetroot, Red Onion, Red Cabbage, CrèmeFraîche and Chervil Salad; Richard Olney’s Potato and Leek Soup; and Paul Bertolli’s Cauliflower Soup. Another Bertolli soup made this short list, a Spinach Soup from his Chez Panisse Cooking [1988] with Alice Waters.

With autumn here—perhaps the best growing season for spinach, along with spring—it seems like the perfect time to finally enjoy this extraordinary soup. Bertolli writes “[t]his is one of the simplest and most economical soups I know of, and it takes very little time to make.” If you are quick with a knife, this soup goes from cutting board to table in 30 minutes. And nothing is lost to speed. To my taste, Bertolli’s Spinach Soup ranks as one of the most delicious soups in my entire cookbook collection. As a starter, Bertolli’s recipe serves 8.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

5¼ cups water

1 large carrot (4 ounces), diced

1 stalk of celery (2½ ounces), diced

1 medium yellow onion (6 ounces), diced

3 bunches of spinach (1 pound, 2 ounces), de-stemmed, washed and drained

Salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a wide stainless-steel pot (at least 5-quart capacity). Add ¾ cup water and the carrot, celery, and onion. Cook at a low simmer, covered, for 20 minutes.

Add the remaining 4½ cups water and bring to a boil. Add the spinach and cook over high heat for 1 minute, stirring until all of the spinach is well wilted. Do not cover the pot: volatile acids, which are released when the vegetable is heated, will condense on the lid, fall back into the pot, and cause discoloration. Purée the entire mixture thoroughly in a blender, do not sieve, and transfer the soup immediately to a hot tureen. Season with salt and pepper to taste, garnish as desired, and serve immediately.

As to garnishes, Bertolli suggests a few options in his introduction to the recipe. Consider adding garlic butter or crème fraîche thinned to the soup’s consistency. Better yet, he writes, serve with “grated Parmesan, small buttered garlic croutons, and extra virgin olive oil drizzled over the surface.” Personally, I think this is all gild for the lily; I serve the soup without any embellishment.

A word or two on selecting and cleaning spinach: look for perky, fresh leaves with an intense green color. A good bunch will squeak when squeezed. Bertolli prefers a smooth-leaf spinach over the heavy, crinkle-leaf varieties, such as Bloomsdale, but writes that either type works well in this soup.

Take care washing fresh spinach, which often harbors sand and dirt. After stemming, place the leaves in a very large bowl filled with cold water and mix the spinach around with your hand. Wait a minute for any sand and dirt to drift away to the bowl’s bottom.  Then gently lift out the spinach so as not to disturb the settled grit. I typically repeat this process a couple more times especially if the spinach seems particularly dirty.

Finally, my dear editor suggested that I remind you to take care when blending hot liquids. I heed the counsel of the talented and scientifically-minded Heston Blumenthal. Heston Blumenthal at home [2011] describes how to liquefy soup: “The contents of the pan need to be transferred to the jug of the blender while still warm, as they’ll liquidize more efficiently like that. That said, no matter how eager you are to get the soup done, resist the urge to pour it into a blender while it’s still piping hot. If you put a hot liquid in the jug and close the lid, the heat can cause the air pressure to build to such an extent that, when you hit the switch, the soup forces its way out. So let it cool for a few minutes, then fill the jug no more than two-thirds full. Put on the lid but remove the small inner section, hold a folded tea-towel over the top, then press the button. Leave it for long enough that the contents are fully and evenly liquidized.”