I'm curious why or how Barilla got to the top. I never once saw an Italian cook with anything but Barilla pasta. What reason is behind this?

Well, I dont know about all those other cooks but my Neapolitan grandmother always used DeCecco pasta - or else, it was homemade. I still use DeCecco, for my own taste its the best.
- Marie
(Sorry, my daughter has got the keyboard switched over to French, the apostrophes all come out as this è and I have to wait for her to come home from school to show me how to change it back)

Ditto for my husband's entire extended family. Nothing but De Cecco.

Steph

Diva --- Is that the brand that you told us all (good) Italian cooks use? This was during our visit to the market, I guess. I've been trying to remember.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Italian Connection:
Well, I dont know about all those other cooks but my Neapolitan grandmother always used DeCecco pasta - or else, it was homemade. /QUOTE]

By far the best seller in the Italian markets here in St. Louis. Perhaps it is a southern Italian favorite. Most of the Italian/American population in this community traces its roots to Naples and south.

I've only seen Barilla in the regular supermarket chains. And it seems only recently -- since those cute TV commercials started airing.

Hmm, well in all the apartments I ate at while living in Bologna all I saw were Barilla boxes everywhere. In my particular apartment there was a Bolognese, two Sardinians and a Sicilian, and all 4 agreed on Barilla.

It's cheap. Not the cheapest, but very inexpensive. A 1 kg. box of Barilla spaghetti costs the same as 500 grams of DeCecco spaghetti.

I think Barilla is based out of Bologna area...
Mostly here people use Dececco. but barilla is also all over the coop grocery stores!! lot's of advertising.
they have also opened a school!!!

Cooks Illustrated did repeated blind taste-testings. 1st place spaghetti in 1994 as well as 2001--RONZONI! DeCecco came in 2nd, tied with Muellers! When it came to Farfalle, Muellers came in 1st with DeCecco 2nd. Might be worth a try for anyone watching their wallets and/or whose families eat pounds of pasta every week. I have also found a decent whole wheat spaghetti from Italy--Azzurro, which is organic, and is easily available in my local supermarkets. (I need a plate of pasta gramlin here!)

I think Mullers is the worst pasta on the planet. It is thick, sticky, and too starcy and if you overcook it by one millisecond it turns mushy. I use Barilla and if I could find DeCecco I would try that.

Ginger

I like Barilla and DeCecco (if I'm not eating fresh pasta in Italy!!). I never noticed the price difference. Although I remember at Whole Foods, a box of DeCecco was $2.49, which was almost double the cost of the same pasta in regular grocery store. Whole Foods is terrific and proud!

I don't know what my Bolognese family eats in Italy but outside the Bolgona airport there is a huge box (statute thing) of Barilla!

i use dececco, always have, always will. that being said i would have loved to see the results of the cook's illustrated test, using the same brands but done in italy. i am sure the results would be very different.

Barilla is actually based in Parma. It used to be a very good pasta in the past decades, or maybe it is just that it was one of the very few brands of dried pasta for sale. I personally think that the standard shapes' quality has plummeted over the past decade and now Barilla had a vary bad price/quality balance. The "special" shapes are produced by small factories on licence and are way better.
Basically the problem is that Barilla gets overcooked real fast because they changed the quality of wheat and the drying time and temperature (pasta needs to be dried very slowly and at a very low temerature).
A very good (commercial) pasta used to be Molisana, but the industry closed down last year (or early this year). I also like Del Verde.

Friends of mine who live or lived abroad, though, say that Barilla is still the best pasta to be found abroad.

I am a DeCecco fan. My cousin 's husband works for their export office (in Chieti province).
Love their penne rigate.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Alice Twain:
The"special" shapes are produced by small factories on licence and are way better.
Basically the problem is that Barilla gets overcooked real fast.

Maybe that's why I've always thought Barilla was acceptable--I get the specialty shapes (My son loves pasta but refuses the spaghetti shape!)and I NEVER overcook it!

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Originally posted by debp1:
Maybe that's why I've always thought Barilla was acceptable--I get the specialty shapes (My son loves pasta but refuses the spaghetti shape!)

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With "special" shapes I really mean shapes that are hard to ffind anywhere except in the very region or subregion where they are usd. A good example is Anelletti siciliani, which is small rings of pasta about one centimeter of diameter that are used in Palermo to make a baked pasta with eggplant. These are quiote hard to find outside western Sicily, in Milano they are marketed only a small number of supermarkets. Now, that shapes do you use?

My local Italian market stocks a different 'novelty' shape every month, which they give as a free gift to customers who spend over $50.
Last month they were tennis rackets. The month before that they looked like little radiators.
I can't remember the brand names. Not one of the well known ones though. Must have been a small boutique producer.
I just looked in my pantry and find I have the following brands and shapes:
Zanellini (Mantova, Emilia-Romagna)- Fusilli #74
Divella (Basilicata)- very small shells
Verolanuova (Basilicata) - Gemelli
AND
Lucio Garofalo (Gragnano near Naples) - Anellini
This looks like what you are describing, Alice, except the name is Anellini, not Anelletti. Is it the same?
And if it is...since I have it(which I bought to add to broth based soups), I need a good recipe for the baked pasta nad eggplant.

I have a recipe in Italian that you can read here (with addendum), and another is here. Sergio is Sicilian, and I received mine froma Sicilian friend. I don't have time to translate them now. I will check if I'll be able to do it later.

I have a couple points to address.

The Barilla pastas we get in the U.S. are not imported -- not anymore, I should say. They are made in the U.S. from U.S. and Canadian wheat.

I, like Alice, like Del Verde. It has the right bite. I particularly like their penne.

Alessi produces some nice cavatelli and orechiette.

DeCecco is my mainstay when I can't get Del Verde, and Barilla is OK. Its farfalle are its best shape, to my taste and bite.


Scott

I'm with you, Scott. Farfalle is my favorite shape. I prefer fresher and lighter sauce recipies and think that the farfalle is perfect.

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Originally posted by jnini:
I like Barilla and DeCecco (if I'm not eating fresh pasta in Italy!!).

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One thing that I may clarify, 'cause it seems you got it a bit mixed. "Pasta" is a definition that actually comprises a lot of different preparations, at times hugely different.
Basically, we may say that all around the Mediterranean there is the habit of cooking some kind of starch-based food to use garnisehd with sauces or other addictions. In a sense also cuscus and Sardinian fregula (a kind of bigger cuscus) are in the cathegory, and may be considered "pasta" as well as spaghetti and maccheroni. Even sticking to "Italian" pasta, and leaving aside "scrippelle", crespelle and gnocchi, we have a variety of recipes including pizzoccheri (made with buckwheat) and other preparations.
Sticking to the wheat pasta, there are two main kinds of it: durum wheat pasta and eggs pasta. The first is traditionally made in southern Italy and requires a long, slow process of drying on special racks before being cooked. This drying process is essential to give the pasta its "bite". All the most common industrial pasta shapes (from spaghetti to fusilli to mezze maniche to penne to maccheroni, and all the way back to kifferi and trenette) is this kind of dried pasta. Due to its characteristics, durum wheat pasta cannot be cooked fresh (or rather, its performance is much lower if cooked fresh!) and requires quite large plants to be produced: it is not homemade. Therefore each time you have a dish of such pasta in Italy, it's industrial (though it may come froma small, semi-artigianal industry) and boxed, just like the one you buy in the United States.
Northern Italy has a weather that prevents durum wheat from growing, so we just have "regular" wheat, that is not as good for producing pasta. The workaround is to mix the flour (actually, durum what pasta is produced from "semola rimacinata" and not plain flour) with eggs instead of water. Eggs give pasta a better texture, allowing it not to become mushy and too soft while cooking (if you get a pasta that is soft and mushy, it's because it was made of the wrong kind of wheat); on the other hand this kind of pasta can only be kept for a few days, and not for months like durum wheat pasta (after a dozen months, dried pasta tends to break in pieces while cooking becase it's become too dry and does not rehidratate properly). Eggs pasta is made above the Appennines (in northern Tuscany, Marche, Emilia Romagna, Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto). It is not produced in any shape like durum wheat pasta: basically it is used for filled pasta (like tortelli or ravioli), for lasagne and for the many "ribbon" shapes (tagliatelle, pappardelle, tajarin, etc.), and for little else.
Mainly in mountainious regions of southern Italy, there is a tradition of making a few shapes of fresh pasta with durum wheat: cavatielli, strascinati, spaghetti alla chitarra, orecchiette are the most common examples. Often enough also these shapes are made adding a few eggs to the mixture of flour and water, and they are not usually mass-marketed.

OK--dissertation over Alice--you passed! But, I'm not sure what your point was. I wasn't saying that fresh pasta was made from one ingredient or the other, clearly I don't know. I have eaten fresh pasta in Bologna, obviously the egg kind. So, my point was, when I am not eating any fresh "pasta" in Italy, I will buy DeCecco and Barilla here in the states. So, if it isn't called pasta when it is dried, then, scusami! OOOOPS. I missed the memo on hairsplitting.

PS, Garganelli (sp?) is a tubular shape pasta made from the fresh egg pasta of E-R. (Or dried.) But I've had it fresh mostly. Very regional shape I think. Did I get ya? It isn't filled or ribbon!

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The Barilla pastas we get in the U.S. are not imported -- not anymore, I should say. They are made in the U.S. from U.S. and Canadian wheat.

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Yes, and the Italian Barilla is made in Italy...from the same U.S. and Canadian wheat!

Ok, let me put it more schematically:

• eggs pasta: all fresh, mostly handmade;
• dried pasta (spaghetti, maccheroni, penne, etc.): all driedn, usually months old and always industrial.

Fresh pasta is not served very often in restaurants, and it is neraly unknown in many italian regions.
If you are having delicious spaghetti allo scoglio, you are not having fresh pasta.