I Due Pastori Pasta d'Italia

I Due Pastori, 'the two shepherds', high quality artisan Italian pasta produced using the best quality Italian durum wheat semolina and spring water according to traditional recipes.

Pasta is such a simple product made from flour and water that people could be forgiven for thinking that all pastas are created equal. But anyone who has tried Mediterraneo's artisan pasta from Italy will know that this could not be further from the truth...

So what makes a great pasta?

Well the devil, as they say, is in the details; first and foremost it is the use of high quality ingredients. Carefully selected high protein durum semolina wheat, is stone ground and then combined with natural spring water prized for its mineral content which helps to provide the pasta with a distinctive flavour.

The pasta is then extruded through 19th century bronze dies, these dies give the pasta a course texture which helps to hold the sauce and flavours that the pasta is prepared with. This results in a product which not only looks different when compared to commercial pastas, but the taste and feel when the pasta is eaten is significantly different.

Next artisan pasta is air dried for between 40-60 hours at low temperatures depending on the shape, which helps to preserve the nutritional content of the pasta and allows a fermentation process to naturally occur which gives the pasta even more flavour and may aid in digestability. This compared with commercial pasta manufacturers who use fans to dry the pasta in just a few hours.

All of this means that our artisan producers create pasta that is nutritious, flavoursome, well textured and looks beautiful. For those who have had the fortune to travel to Italy this will explain why Italians don’t tend to use as much sauce on their pastas, and will even just use some extra virgin olive oil; grated Pecorino, Parmesan or similar cheese and some fresh basil or Italian Parsley. Quite simply our quality artisan pasta has a flavour and texture that is a shame to smother with sauce.