And without a break in the haste and hurry The stars separate and the hailstones fall In the basket, no spattered stuffing On the bing not a trace of extra dough Perfectly lined up, of great beauty, Without breaking, the dough is fine and thin It swells so that one can guess at the stuffing below, Soft as silk floss in the springtime, White as autumn silk, cooked just in time — Shu Xi, “Ode to Bing,” ca 300, transl Antony Shugaar The postmedieval evolution of pasta took place largely in Italy Pasta makers formed guilds and made fresh types from soft wheat flour throughout Italy, dried types from durum semolina in the south and in Sicily Italian cooks developed the distinctive preparation style called pastasciutta or “dry pasta,” pasta served as the main component of the dish, moistened with sauce but not drowning in it or dispersed in a soup or stew With its ideal climate for drying raw noodles, a tricky process that took one to four weeks, Naples became the center of durum pasta manufacturing Thanks to the mechanization of dough kneading and extrusion, by the 18th century durum pasta had become street food in Naples, and common in much of Italy Perhaps because street vendors minimized cooking and open-air consumers enjoyed chewing on something substantial, it was in Naples that people began to prefer pasta cooked for minutes rather than hours, so that it retains some firmness This practice spread to the rest of the country in the late 19th century, and the term al dente, or cooked “to the tooth,” appeared after World War I Subsequent decades brought effective artificial drying and the machinery and understanding necessary to turn pasta making from a batch-by-batch process to a continuous ... a tricky process that took one to four weeks, Naples became the center of durum pasta manufacturing Thanks to the mechanization of dough kneading and extrusion, by the 18th century durum pasta had become street food in... cooked for minutes rather than hours, so that it retains some firmness This practice spread to the rest of the country in the late 19th century, and the term al dente, or cooked “to the tooth,” appeared after World War I... durum pasta had become street food in Naples, and common in much of Italy Perhaps because street vendors minimized cooking and open-air consumers enjoyed chewing on something substantial, it was in Naples that people began to prefer pasta