Application Studies / Method for Firmness of Irregularly Shaped Pasta

Method for Firmness of Irregularly Shaped Pasta

Industry:

Food

Pasta

Attributes measured:

hardness

firmness

toughness

Background

The pasta industry has established firmness methods for spaghetti and Asian noodles, but it has struggled to develop and adopt a common method for the firmness for different shapes of short goods pasta. A common method is an important milestone to allow the industry to compare pasta firmness across different formulations, shapes, sizes, and vendors. Among the shortfalls of previously proposed methods are that firmness determinations are too dependent on pasta shape, thus the pasta industry was unable to adequately discriminate the firmness of pasta of different types, production variable, and suppliers. Texture Technologies has developed a method using the TA-93WST Wire Mesh Extrusion Fixture which is easy to deploy, highly repeatable and extremely differentiating. This study presents a method which demonstrates extraordinary differentiation of pasta firmness by cook time within and across brands and pasta shapes.