About Pasta Leonessa

Gusto Italiano Visits Pastificio Leonessa in Naples Italy. 

The Secrets of Pasta Making Process: 

About pasta Leonessa

Leonessa is coming from Naples, Campania. The commitment of Pasta Leonessa is to preserve the flavor of a tradition, made with simple ingredients: water and durum wheat semolina. It’s the tradition and coming from the ancient Neapolitan pasta maker. Producing pasta is a passion represent Italian real culture and the perseverance to make the good pasta what is the same as their national character what is never wrong.

We are proud to represent it. We only use the traditional bronze dies. We work slowly and with the same patience of master pasta makers portrayed in old prints of '900, who left to air dry their pasta. As we respect our pasta, we know to wait for the right drying time, which for some formats up to two days. Making pasta is a family passion: if you come in our laboratory , you can verify that in addition to qualified employees, there will always be one of us to follow in the first person with all the various stages of production.

Naples Traditions:

They do not come from a creative whim, every form contains a moment of our culinary history, a world of flavors unique and valuable. A pleasure for the palate and an invitation to discover and appreciate the culture of homemade pasta quality. Cook it according to our ideas, which are the simple ones, the same as always: large pot and appropriate for the size of the pasta, 6 quarts of water for every pound of pasta, water boiling to add the salt (about 3 tablespoons, if you taste the water, it should taste like the sea.), turn it gently with a wooden spoon and drain a minute before when you feel they are cooked "al dente".  Try it seasoned only with good extra-virgin olive oil and parmesan, stir and wait to be perfectly absorbed, it'll a good and simple appetite.

Production Process: Water, Durum wheat semolina, knead and wait ... The ingredients are the same as always. 

The process of manual work has been replaced by the automated processing, in the seventeenth century, with the introduction of the printing press and the passage of the dough in bronze dies. And it is this traditional passage, reproduced in our laboratory, which gives the pasta that surface very rough to the touch, that unmistakable roughness / porosity which allows the sauce to bind perfectly to it. The next step is drying, a particularly delicate stage, for the most part responsible for the final quality of the homemade pasta, recognizable at first taste. And we dried the dough still looms in "closets" static, slowly and at very low temperatures (max 45 ° C). The lower the temperature, the longer the drying period ,and better are favored those fermentation processes which give rise, among other substances, such organic acids (in particular lactic acid) and aromatic compounds. Careful processing, almost a ritual: the final product will retain and exalt the flavors of wheat, the raw material of our work, chosen with passion and competence.