PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES
The harvest
contain gluten, which represents a problem for the health of people with a coeliac disease, or suffering from a sensitivity or allergy to this protein. In order to thus satisfy the needs of these consumers, and given the growing demand for gluten-free products from the market, the food industry is constantly looking for raw materials that could substitute wheat. Currently, in the pasta sector, there are numerous gluten-free flours used, but those obtained from rice are substantially the most common. If, with regards to food technology, rice pasta represents a typical product of the oriental tradition with very ancient origins (in China already known in around 900 A.D.), on the other hand, for the non-coeliac consumer, rice pasta is a novelty in recent years. The traditional preparation of this product consists in adding water to the brown or refined rice flour and then let the dough to ferment. The dough thus obtained has a very dense consistency and can therefore be drawn into various formats. Eggs may or may not be added to the dough. On an industrial level, today there are two main approaches to gluten-free pasta: focusing on the ingredients; or focusing on the technological process.
July / September 2020
Professional
PASTA
Already starting from the cultivation on the field, it can be said that in ancient wheats, characterized by a conspicuous size (1,10 - 1,30 m, but they can reach up to 1,80 m), there is greater risk of a folding of the ear on itself and there could be major difficulties in mechanical harvesting, given the high probability of clogging of the threshing machine of the tube; however, ancient wheats have a greater competitiveness towards the infesting weeds. Current wheats, on the contrary, characterized by a low size (0,7-1,00 m), ensure greater resistance for the folding wheat ears and moreover, they are better suited to mechanical harvesting: characteristics obtained with various genetic improvement programs implemented during the Green Revolution.
Ancient wheats have a low environmental impact Modern wheats, therefore, derive from a breeding program which has led to a decrease in the genetic variability and a consequent high productivity per hectare, due to a greater and necessary input of nitrogenous fertilizers and chemicals. In the case of cultivation of ancient wheats like Senatore Cappelli it’s possible to obtain constant production performance, but the harvest yield appears to be low: this is connected to the greater genetic variability of these “original� wheats and then to their rusticity, which makes them compatible with the biological method, given the fact that they have a greater ability to adapt to different environmental conditions without resorting to excessive application of chemicals.
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