Pasta

Pasta is a generic term for foods made from an unleavened dough of flour and water, and sometimes a combination of egg and flour. Pastas include noodles in various lengths, widths and shapes, and varieties that are filled with other ingredients like ravioli and tortellini. The word pasta is also used to refer to dishes in which pasta products are a primary ingredient. It is usually served with sauce.

There are approximately 600 different shapes of pasta. Examples include spaghetti (thin rods), maccheroni (tubes or cylinders), fusilli (swirls), and lasagne (sheets).

Pasta is categorized in two basic styles: dried and fresh. Dried pasta made without eggs can be stored for up to two years under ideal conditions, while fresh pasta will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator. Pasta is generally cooked by boiling. Pasta is made from a simple combination of water and flour or eggs and flour. Pasta is sometimes colored with spinach, tomatoes or food dye, and sometimes flavored with spices or cheese.

Some pasta varieties, such as pizzoccheri, are made from buckwheat flour. Fresh pasta may include eggs . Whole wheat pasta has become increasingly popular because of its perceived health benefits. Most whole wheat pastas have a mixture of whole grain and regular grain ingredients.

Pasta’s origin continues to evoke speculation. While many different cultures ate some sort of noodle-like food, composed mostly of grain, the key characteristics of pasta are durum wheat semolina, with a high gluten content, made with a technique that allows the resultant dough to be highly malleable. Thus, the many different shapes (i.e., ziti, spaghetti, ravioli) that characterize “pasta.” South of Europe, in Arab North Africa, a food similar to pasta, known as couscous, has been eaten for centuries. However, it lacks the distinguishing malleable nature of what is now referred to as pasta, couscous being more akin to droplets of dough. In China, noodles of millet or rice have been eaten for centuries, but lacked the durum wheat semolina paste that denotes pasta.

The Chinese were eating noodles made of millet as long ago as 2000 BC. This was confirmed by the discovery of a well-preserved bowl of millet noodles over 4000 years old. However, durum wheat was not known in China until later times. Durum wheat, and thus pasta as it is known today, was introduced by Arabs during their conquest of Sicily in the late 7th century.

In the 1st century BC writings of Horace, lagana were fine sheets of dough which were fried and were an everyday food. An early 5th century cookbook describes a dish called lagana that consisted of layers of dough with meat stuffing, a possible ancestor of modern-day Lasagna. But the method of cooking these sheets of dough does not correspond to our modern definition of either a fresh or dry pasta product. The first concrete information concerning pasta products in Italy dates from the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

Information about LLC “Pivdenmlin” TM “Miroshnik”

LLC (limited liability corporation)”Pivdenmlin” (TM “Miroshnik”) is the Ukrainian mill complex of the European level, processing corn  and producing flour and pasta.

Wheat flour a is produced on the Swiss equipment “BUHLER”, under the special technology from the soft sorts of wheat (in by a percent correlation – 80% of soft red winter wheat and 20% of soft white winter wheat, farmed on the South of Ukraine, wheat genus – wheaten)

Wheat flour a is produced  according to GSTU 46.004-99, ISO 9001-2009, without GMO;(indexes: gluten 26-27; и.д.к. 70-75; whiteness 60-62; albumen 12,35%; humidity 14,5%; ash content- 0,45; number of fall 360-380)

LLC “Pivdenmlin” TM “Miroshnik”  sells high-quality pasta, produced on the Italian equipment “ANSELMO”  and on the Italian lines “BRAIBANTI” .