Bronze Drawn Durum Wheat Pasta

Visitors to the Monti Lattari countryside outside of Naples in the late 1800's, would be marveled by the site of streets and balconies lined with drying rods of freshly made pasta. In Gragnano's 'Via Roma' the Amalfi coastal breezes in the daytime, the cooler, dry Lattari mountain breezes at night and the slight humidity in the air, made ideal conditions for undoubtedly the most important factor in pasta-making; the slow and gradual drying process.

Today, the Pastificio Premiato Afeltra still uses traditional bronze processing and extruding machines (dies). They work and dry the dough in the same slow and patient manner handed down by their ancestors but now the drying occurs in state-of-the-art static cells interfaced to a computer which, using probes for temperature and humidity, follows each drying stage.