Whole Wheat Pasta epiphany

[Jenise]

Well, kind of. Let me put it this way: I've never cared for whole wheat pasta much as I wanted, really wanted, to love it. But yesterday at Trader Joe's, on a lark I picked up a package of their store brand whole wheat rotini. Thinking went: after not having any pasta in over four months, maybe it will taste better to me now. So I cooked some this afternoon in a bit of homemade chicken broth: and loved it! Okay, that might be stretching it, but I certainly liked it and would happily have all my chicken soup from this day forward made with whole wheat pasta. Doesn't mean it will pass the red sauce test (and it probably won't), but at least now I'm a step closer to trying it.

I'm with you, Jenise: wish I liked it more than I do. The texture is wrong and it has a strong flavor.

I want to love it too, but it is just wrong. I did buy some miniature wheat pasta in an elbow shape that was OK in what ever I put it in, as I recall. The rest of the box is still sitting in my pantry. I've been told by a few people that you have to force yourself to use it. Soon it becomes good to you. I have not done that because we do not have a lot of pasta, but the dishes I do have, we both love and wheat pasta will not cut it. I suppose one could sneak ground flax into pasta dishes for more of the proper fiber.....I wonder if that would take away from the dish somehow?

We usually eat De Cecco pasta and a while back my wife convinced me to get the whole wheat penne. She used to buy the more generic brands of whole wheat pasta and I never liked them so I was suspicious of this as well, but now I love it and when I try to go back to the regular penne it seems so slippery and flimsy.

I don't usually get too experimental with the fancier brands, but over the holidays I was buying some fancy olive oil and pasta as gifts and got some Latini Farro Spaghetti and it was quite delicate and delicious although beyond our usual budget for weekly pasta ($10 per 1 lb).

[Jenise]

The texture is wrong and it has a strong flavor.

The texture on the Trader Joe's brand was very good, smoother than others I've had in the past. The traditional strong flavor has always been the real issue for me, though, at least in Italian dishes. An even stronger flavor like bacon does a good job of taming it, but then that kind of defeats the health benefit you went to whole wheat in the first place for, doesn't it?

The traditional strong flavor has always been the real issue for me, though, at least in Italian dishes. An even stronger flavor like bacon does a good job of taming it, but then that kind of defeats the health benefit you went to whole wheat in the first place for, doesn't it?

!
Heh.

My partner and I have tried several brands and several "species", if you will. The flax seed-enriched stuff isn't bad, the whole-grain ones are passable, the whole-wheat ones are best as little elbows and worst as fettucine. I haven't found much brand difference.

The funny thing is that I really like spinach pasta! So, I think I'm not some sort of awful purist.

We have baked with success and even made pancakes and waffles out of the "white whole wheat", which is made I've been told from a white or whiter wheat grain. Thomas makes an English Muffin from it. Have not seen pasta made from it, tho there might be; and if so, it might be more palatable.

Sauces made with hearty greens match well with whole wheat and other whole grain pastas like buckwheat. Savoy cabbage, kale, chard, beet greens etc sauteed with or without onion, garlic, seasons of choice, moistenend with water or broth, with or without meat such as chirizo, kielbassa, italian sausage are just terrific and almost "need" the flavor of the wheat or other grain.

Pizzochieri - buckwheat pasta with greens and potatoes - a very traditional dish from northern Lombardy/Switzerland is a fine example

This is just an extension of matching the weight and taste of the sauce to the noodle - like you always do anyway.

You might like the other grain pastas made fresh rather than the store bought dried. You will have to do some experimenting to get the right proportion of flours - a certain amount of all purpose, better yet durum flour is needed for gluten development.