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and plus a lot of meat. Thus, the rise of spaghetti and meatballs, a dish unknown in Italy,” Krummer writes. “It probably had its origin in several baked Neapolitan pasta dishes, served at religious festivals such as Carnival and Christmas. Italian- Americans had embraced enthusiastically the Americanized version of their food and went on thinking of it as just like the food in the old country.” Of course, to talk about pasta — in China, Italy, America and beyond — is really to talk about flour; pasta is, after all, simply a type of unleavened dough. Traditionally made from a simple combination of wheat flour (most likely durum wheat due to its high gluten content) and water, there’s so much more to pasta’s edible iden- tity than a box of dry pasta can convey. And today, there’s an ever-evolving movement to educate the public about just how diverse, complex and thoughtful the flavors of this foundational ingredient can be. In response to this gap in general culinary knowl- edge, Graison Gill of Bellegarde Bakery in New Orleans and his team are milling their own flour for pastas (and bread, of course), cranking out roughly 2,000 pounds a week and doing some high-end experiments along the way. Lately, they’ve been making pasta using cornmeal from growers in Fairhope, Alabama that “has the colors of the rainbow” and a buckwheat pasta that Gill describes as “beautiful.” “When you’re using and working with fresh flour, you have to remember that up until 100 years ago, there was no such thing as white flour — there was only whole wheat flour. That’s what created what we know as pasta. What we’re doing with our mill is trying to promote fresh flour in the same way that someone talks about fresh vegetables, seafood from the Gulf or wine. Fresh flour has a terroir and dimension and integrity and a lot more flavor than what we’re used to.” And while pasta’s past might be a little bit murky — Marco Polo didn’t quite introduce pasta to Italy, and spaghetti and meatballs isn’t really an Italian dish — the future of this pantry staple seems brighter than ever, as the pastafarians and noodle-heads of today steep themselves in the traditions of the past in order to create the pasta of tomorrow. "You can make flour out of just about anything starchy, even gluten-free ingredients," says Marc Ardoin, Rouses Corporate Chef. To learn how, visit www.rouses.com.

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