The Yorkshire Pasta Company is nothing like the pasta you would find on supermarket shelves. Their range of products includes Fusilli, Penne Rigate, Tortiglioni, Conchiglie and Mezze Maniche Rigate. The team travelled around Italy learning from the Italian artisans how to make pasta traditionally and authentically. Many industrial manufacturers have lost touch with the traditional techniques, opting for rapid, high throughput methods. The Yorkshire Pasta Company wants to take pasta back to basics, with no compromise on flavour, making pasta slowly and authentically; this is essential for enhancing the flavour of the grain and the pasta’s ability to absorb sauces. Some say it even results in a more easily digestible pasta.
As the old saying goes, what you put in is what you get out, and the same goes for the quality of flour and the resulting pasta. The Yorkshire Pasta Company sources their flour from a local mill, working directly with the miller, ensuring superb quality grain with the desired attributes for their recipe. The flour goes through strict quality checks at the mill, and each batch is inspected by the team on arrival. They only use water and locally milled wheat flour, of which over two thirds is grown on their doorstep in Yorkshire. They don’t use any eggs in their recipes, so their pastas are all vegan.
The Yorkshire Pasta Company mixes their specially selected flour with cold water – their ratio is a well kept secret! These two ingredients are mixed gently to preserve the proteins in the flour and create a perfect dough. It is important to master the mixing process as this is the base for creating shapes later on.
Just like the master pasta makers ‘maestri pastai’ of Italy, the team knows that the only way to achieve superior quality pasta is to press the dough through bronze dies. Whilst industrial manufacturers have long since moved to teflon dies to aid their high speeds, they stay true to tradition and invest in old fashioned hard metal dies. Their dies create a rough surface on every single piece, making the pasta perfect for absorbing delicious sauces, elevating a meal from good to superb.
They slow dry their pasta at low temperatures which creates the conditions needed to develop flavour. The drying process, which is bespoke for each shape, removes excess moisture from the dough and locks in delicious taste. This means that each piece of pasta will stay scrumptious for up to 2 years. The Yorkshire Pasta Company pasta is then placed in their specially developed paper bags. These are 100% recyclable and each one is sealed by hand with two of their signature metal fastenings. These fastenings make their bags look good and more importantly help avoid using plastic!
Since they launched in 2020 they have appeared on James Martin, have been raved about by Davina and have won awards – including four Great Taste! Their premium British pastas are in over 450 independent shops, appear on some incredible restaurant menus and are being enjoyed at family dinner tables up and down the UK!
