dissolved proteins and gelated starch, and
make a firm noodle.
Making Durum Pasta Dough and Shapes
Durum pasta is made from semolina, which is
milled durum endosperm with a
characteristically coarse particle size, 0.15–
0.5 mm across, thanks to the hard nature of
durum endosperm (finer grinding causes
excessive damage to starch granules). Flat
pasta shapes are punched from out of a sheet
of dough. Long noodles and short thick ones
are formed by extruding the dough through
the holes of a die at high pressure. The
movement, pressure, and heat of extrusion
change the structure of the dough by shearing
the protein network apart, mixing it more
intimately with starch granules that have been
partly gelated by the heat and pressure, and
allowing broken protein bonds to re-form and
stabilize the new network. Noodles extruded
through modern low-friction Teflon dies end