proteins. Durum wheats have the advantage of
a high gluten content, and a gluten that is less
elastic than bread-wheat gluten and so easier
to roll out. Water normally makes up around
30% of the dough weight, compared to 40% or
more for bread doughs.
Pasta, Cheese, and Wine Without End
By the time of the great storyteller
Giovanni Boccaccio, who died in 1375,
pasta was familiar enough in Italy to be
part of a glutton’s paradise:
in a country called Bengodi...there was a
mountain made entirely of grated
Parmesan cheese, on which lived people
who did nothing but make macaroni and
ravioli and cook them in capon broth. And
then they threw them down, and the more
of them you took, the more you had. And
nearby ran a rivulet of white wine whose
better was never drunk, and without a drop