Lucy Vaserfirer - The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook: 100 Recipes for Every Kind of Amazing Pasta Your Pasta Maker Can Make

An extruder forces a mass of pasta dough through a disc with holes known as a die. Most store-bought dry semolina pastas that people are familiar with such as spaghetti, linguine, fettuccine, bucatini, macaroni, rigatoni, penne, fusilli, rotini, casarecce, gemelli, and shells are actually extruded.

Most extruders, whether manual or electric, use an auger to move the dough to and through the die. Manual models such as the torchietto look almost exactly like an old-school meat grinder but have no blade. Some models have integrated mixers. As far as both manual and electric models go, the less the machine heats up the pasta as it operates, which would change the structure of the dough and even partially cook it, the better the flavor and texture of the pasta will be.

Other extruders consist of a barrel for the dough to go in with a piston to press it through the die. As far as I know these are always manual, and as you might imagine, they require a lot of muscle to operate. The Bigolaro, also known as a torchio, is the best known of this style.

Extruders come with a selection of dies. Extruders marketed to home cooks typically include dies for spaghetti, bucatini, macaroni, rigatoni, and fusilli. Dies for commercial machines are typically sold a la carte. Dies for both commercial and home extruders can be made of either Teflon plastic or bronze. Bronze dies are prized for the rough texture they impart to the pasta, which gives sauce something to cling to. Teflon dies, on the other hand, minimize friction, making it possible to extrude pasta more quickly and with less force.

The pressure with which the dough is forced and the shape of the holes in the die determine the type of pasta that is formed. You cant necessarily tell by looking at the front of a die what shape pasta it will make. Pasta may twist, wave, and curl as it comes out.

Once you get a feel for the dough, you will see that using an extruder is as easy as can be. In fact, Id say that using an extruder is easier than using a sheeter or a cavatelli machine.

Pasta made with an extruder is firm with a satisfying chew.

EXTRUDER DIE SCIENCE IN A NUTSHELL

I find it endlessly amusing to watch how pasta emerges from a die, and viewers of my Noodlevision posts on Instagram seem to agree (shown ). For all of us who are fascinated and even mesmerized by this pasta dance, my resident science guy offers up an explanation of the science: non-Newtonian fluid flow. Non-Newtonian fluids such as pasta dough (and also ketchup, a better known example), flow with viscosity that varies depending on flow rates and shear forces applied. In other words, these substances can behave as either a liquid or a solid. This is why dough can twist, wave, and curl as it is extruded. Look at the back of different extruder dies to see how some are drilled to allow pasta dough to flow through certain areas faster than others.