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Why Our Pasta's Special
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Pappardelle’s Pasta -- The Fine Art of Pasta. Pasta as art? Indeed! Our pasta is produced with the same care and attention to detail that artists use when taking paint to canvas or chisel to stone. Pappardelle’s pasta is a true artisanal food.
And what exactly is an artisanal food? It is made by hand, using the finest-quality ingredients available and following traditional methods of production.
Our pasta makers have an intimate knowledge of every step of the time-
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honored tradition of making pasta: the flour, the added ingredients, the mixing and extruding, and finally, the drying process. Every product we produce has the touch and oversight of a pasta maker guiding it through the delicate craft of turning flour and water into pasta – in this case, the nation’s best pasta.
Our Flour
If pasta is essentially just flour and water, what could possibly set Pappardelle’s Pasta apart from the hundreds of varieties available today? To begin with, the quality of the flour is integral to the final product.
Although flour is made out of wheat it can vary wildly, not only nutritional content but also flavor and overall integrity. Pasta made with all-purpose or bleached flours are inferior. Pasta made with a combination of all-purpose flour and semolina durum wheat are only slightly better. Only pure durum semolina flour gives birth to high-quality pasta. So, of course, this is the type of flour that Pappardelle’s uses in all of its pasta.
The majority of durum semolina flour used by the pasta industry in this country is grown in the northern part of the United States. Cool summer nights and long warm summer days create ideal conditions for durum to thrive. Durum is planted in mid-April and harvested in late August. Semolina is the coarsely ground endosperm of durum wheat that's golden in color and very coarse and granular in texture.
We at Pappardelle’s know that the better the durum, the better the pasta. It is from durum wheat, the hardest wheat known, that pasta gets its yellow amber color, pleasant nutty flavor and the ability to retain both shape and firmness when cooked. After much searching, we came across a unique flour mill in the middle of North Dakota to supply the
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durum semolina wheat for our pasta. Since 1922 the mill has been producing this nation’s highest quality durum semolina. The mill works closely with researchers from North Dakota State University to ensure the quality of their crops at all times.
Our Dried Pasta
The pasta is created in a small manufacturing plant in north Denver where we employ a staff trained in the traditional methods of pasta making. The care and dedication our craftspeople bring to the product is evident in the quality of our pasta. Pasta is sturdy, but during production it can be tempermental – a host of factors can ruin a batch of dough. The pasta makers have to be aware of multiple factors – humidity levels of both flour and dough, for example, and the temperature inside and outside the building - that can ruin a batch of dough.
Aside from ingredient and environmental issues, our pasta makers also have to be trained to operate the often finicky pasta machines, most of which are made in Italy.
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The “flavorings” we use in our pasta are sourced from the industry’s highest quality producers. We do not use preservatives or unnatural flavorings in our pasta. Everything is natural. For example, we have found the best importer of Szechaun peppers and the highest quality producer of naturally dried oranges to flavor our famous Orange Szechaun pasta.
The durum semolina flour is mixed slowly with water and kneaded in small batches of 100 pounds or less. The pasta dough is then extracted through our bronze dies creating the desired shapes. Pasta dough zips through the common Teflon dies used by most pasta producers, but it
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labors to get through those made of bronze. The extra effort results in coarser noodles, which feel more luxurious on the tongue and do a better job of gripping sauces.
Our greatest concern is the quality of the noodle. This is why we focus on using the finest ingredients and the smallest of batches. We monitor each and every strand of pasta.
After the noodle or shaped pasta has been formed it is carefully dried, an art-form unto itself. The pasta is taken to special rooms built explicitly for pasta drying, where it will sit for between 24 and 48 hours. Each room is customized to dry only certain cuts and shapes of pasta. For example, if a pasta maker unknowingly places the wide noodle (and thus more difficult to dry) pappardelle cut in the wrong drying room, it dries too fast, becomes too brittle and fails our quality control. We have no choice but to discard the product.
Another example: orzo, our most complicated pasta to produce. Its unique “football” shape makes even-drying it a tricky procedure. If it does not dry evenly the orzo will crack and split, making it unusable.
Commercial pasta is dried at around 190 degrees, but in order to preserve the flavor and nutritional components, we slow dry our pasta at only 90 degrees. Although time consuming, we know that this method creates a superior product.
Our Fresh-Frozen Ravioli
As with our additions to our dried pasta that we source around the world, we take the same amount of time and care in finding the best quality ingredients for our unique ravioli fillings.
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In our ravioli dough we use an “extra fancy” durum flour. This flour creates a more pliable and elastic dough that suits the needs of fresh pasta, especially fresh-filled pasta.
We pride ourselves on our ravioli – and so do others. We are known throughout the Mountain West as having the best ravioli. Why? Because our dough is supple and flavorful, with each and every batch of our fillings made by hand by one woman who as been making them for eight years. She has taken the recipes that co-founder David Bowen developed and added her flair to them, creating succulent and lingering flavors that keep our customers coming back week after week. And not only that, many of our fillings are so thick, chunky and full of texture that they must be hand-fed into the ravioli forming process. We're not like other companies that puree their fillings to a mushy tasteless pulp so that they can speedily make hundreds of ravioli each day. No, just as with our dried pastas, we custom make only small batches of ravioli where the dough maker is an integral part of the ravioli production and can closely monitor every piece of ravioli.
Our belief is that this handmade touch, together with superior recipes, is what sets us apart.
Pappardelle's Products: Available Only At The Finest Restaurants
and At Select Farmers' Markets
Our pasta is served at the finest restaurants and resorts because of our dedication to quality -- it retains its color, firmness of shape and intense flavors throughout the cooking process. The pasta makers’ attention to detail and oversight into every minute step of the process creates a world-class pasta that delights and enlivens the senses: sight, smell and, of course, taste! Click here for the About Our Company section, which lists some of the better known places Pappardelle's has been served.
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You can also find Pappardelle's Products in select Farmers' Markets around the country and a few gourmet retail stores. These types of markets are where we presently are expanding, although in a controlled fashion.
Click here if you are interested in the opportunity to represent our products at a farmers' market.
Please realize that while we are growing in small ways, keeping our existing customers completely satisfied is of paramount importance to us. We will never compromise our ingredients or methods, which are the very bedrock upon which we founded Pappardelle's in 1984. You can continue to be assured
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that the high standards of quality you are seeing and tasting today will always remain our number one priority.
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