I Imported a Professional Pasta Machine From Italy (38lbs!) 

Alex, the paper you want is "Thermal Modifications of Starch During High-Temperature Drying of Pasta" (Cereal Chemistry). I believe the complete pdf is available online.

I work in the Print and Media Technology Industry, and even tho its sounds weird, when making paper and drying it, there needs to be a little bit of moisture left inside the paper otherwise it will get brittle. I assume thats the same with pasta, it needs to be dry, but there needs to be some percentage of moisture left in them to not get brittle.

Hello Alex, I am a food technologist and I suggest you to find on the internet the diagrams of drying for pasta. You should alternate heating and resting phases with different air humidity. It's a little bit tricky but you can do it!

Hey Alex! First of all, love the pasta series! Secondly, I have some experience with extruders and one thing that you're doing "wrong" is using a steel knife to cut the pasta at the bronze die. Remeber that using a material with equal of higher hardness will lead to scratching. This can, over time, cause some trouble (uneven extrusion pressure). Also NEVER use a steel tool on the extruder screw! I have seen 10.000 euro screws ruined because someone scratched it with a screwdriver when trying to remove some stuck material or forcing materials down the hopper. So, for the bronze die I would advice you to use a plastic knife of fine plastic wire to cut the pasta as this will be unable to stratch the die itself. As for tools to use on the screw itself, we used bronze or brass. They are both still hard, but less than the steel of the screw. Love your video's! Keep up the amazing work!

Just a "small" thing. The extruder head seems to be made of brass, which is softer than most stuff, which means that almost every knife you use, will cut into the brass on every pasta slice, mixing brass shavings in your pasta. You will need a special knife setup for this.

Chemical engineer with experience in high-solids mixing and drying here! You're running up against film formation in your pasta, it looks like. As the pasta is drying, the outer layer of the dough is forming a skin, like if you left any sort of dough out for too long uncovered. If you were just air-drying it, or weren't using heat to speed up the process, then there would be no problem. Then water could just evaporate off the surface as it made its way there, regardless of the skin slowing its movement out of the pasta. However, by adding heat, you're generating a driving force within the pasta that's forcing the water out of the interior of the dough. When it runs into that skin on the outside, it acts like the shell of a kernel of popcorn. The pressure inside the pasta builds and builds, until the shell cracks and the water can get out. Sometimes it gets out all at once, like your shattered pieces. Other times it causes the dough to move as the moisture within moves around looking for the path of least resistance. Tl;dr: I would suggest just running your dehydrator on its lowest temperature setting, or without any heat at all, and just letting the convection fan do its job. I'd be happy to explain the details of what's happening inside and at the surface of the pasta (in excruciating detail, if desired), but I don't know if your viewers would appreciate half a page of differential equations describing the effects of kinetic vs. transport limitations on drying processes...

Alex has now transcended and BECAME Skill Share, itself!

11:03 The problem here is that you dehydrated them too quick.....which just extracts all the water from inside the pasta.The pastas cracked because it extracted all water from inside it at a higher rate. You need to dry them while keeping the air flow at minimum and temp. at 47 - 49°c....to dry them from outside yet maintaining some moisture to hold it's shape and not getting warped.Some pastas were getting warped because they're drying too quickly from inside..before even drying and setting into their structure.

Alex from the past: “I want professional-level quality at home but I don’t want to setup a factory.” Present-day Alex: buys industrial-strength gear.

Congratulations! Your dedication and perseverance has paid off! For drying, I strongly suspect that your temperature is the problem: too high. Gradual is the key, not only for maintaining shape and integrity, but for colour, as well. Cheap dried pasta is a darker yellow, as it appears it's how your dried pasta looks like. Low and slow!

This man is so good at story telling... Jesus, 12 minutes of making dough, extruding, drying and it is awesome! 😆

This series changed the way I shop for pasta. Fantastic. That is a gorgeous pasta machine.

I used to work in an Italian restaurant and the chef used the very same machine for making his pasta. I hated it. Because I was the cleaner 😂

Lesson from potting with clay in elementary school: do not set it in the sun, let it dry slowly in the basement, otherwise it will crack in the oven. the other reason for cracking was using too much water to make a fine even surface.

you're a star, glad you're back at it here. i'm a western food restaurant owner in china. I can't tell you how much greater my food has become by watching your vids and learning from your processes. I love your fearless nature. cheers

Alex, I'm such in admiration when I see the comments. It's like everyone is trying to help you succeed. I love it.

Alex you forgot to put this video on the pasta playlist!!!! huge fan btw you're a big inspiration to me. I'm lucky that you document everything you do through these videos, so I as a teen can watch and learn without having to go to italy myself (: you are helping shape the new generation of chefs

I'm a large scale pasta manufacturer, the problem can be the drying but likely it isn't in this case. From what I see it's either 1. The flour + water mixture isn't even 2. The flour isn't ground fine enough/ there are some larger particles that need to be sifted out that he cant see with the naked eye. #2 is the most common reason which is why on our equipment we have a built in filter before the die. Both cause minor clogging of the die, especially at the narrower parts/ lower parts of the rigatoni shape (the bottom of the ridges which are narrower spaces for the flour to be forced through). One small particle clog will cause it to not tightly form because part of the extrusion hole is blocked (extremely tiny and hard to detect while it's extruding) leading to hairline cracking during drying.

This was a resounding success no matter the drying process. Congratulations Alex!!! I’m happy for you.

Fantastic Alex! it's great to witness the joy in your eyes from the gratification and the effort you spent in your passion!

The last job I had before my current job, they spent $30,000 on a pasta extruder to make "fresh" pasta, only to dry it out. It was very similar to this, just much larger. It was frustrating. The recipe was basically a fresh egg pasta recipe, which they would then dry out before use. One of many things they did completely backward. We had a few dies, but they mostly used the shell die, which makes for a really bizarre fresh pasta shape. But if they had simply not dried it, or used a semolina and water recipe, it would have been fine.

I think the problem is that the drying should be low and slow, not high and fast. Drying too fast at a higher temperature causes a lot of stress to build up, which can lead to structural failure. Drying slower and colder ensures that it has time to balance out built-up pressure and dry more evenly as well.

Wow! Merci! What a great and very entertaining video. I was suprised when it was over and saw the video is nearly 13 minuts long. Very VERY interesting stuff you are doing and knowing i will probalby not be trying out any of it in the near future but it is still a great process to follow. Merci beaucoup, super video Alex!

I'm so excited to see how this works out. I've watched your ramen and pasta maker situations. You finally went for the big one! Thanks for the video @Alex

The type of extruded pasta is also important. In your illustration, you went straight for the widest "rigatoni" shape, approximately 38 mms, if my guess is correct. This type of tube pasta has a wide space, allowing more air circulation,and alternating ridges of different thicknesses. This needs a minimally higher hydration of the semolina mixture. Also, a combination of equal parts of coarse ground and finely ground durum would help. As a suggestion, first try a very narrow buccatini die with a longer noodle, a lower drying temperature and a longer drying time. The narrower space of the buccatini would be better to start the drying process. One additional factor is important. Specifically, the proportion of the durum and water mixture needs to be adjusted for each type of pasta that you plan to extrude. You can get some clue to the proportions for specific types of pasta which tou plan to exyrude by speaking to the Mono Grano people.

Love these series, I have made huge improvement in my pasta cooking. Thanks Alex for revealing all the Luciano secrets;))

Your visuals and sound design just keep getting better, which is awesome! The cooking and pasta content, however, has always been an A+!

I've been watching this series since the beginning of it, and it's been quite the journey. A few weeks ago, I started a new job, working for an Italian pasta restaurant. Everything we cook is from dry pasta, except our lasagna and ravioli. I'm really starting to understand and appreciate dry pasta so much more thanks to what I've learned here, and what I experience there. (The thing I'm really loving, is learning how to make such amazing dishes like spaghetti carbonara, Fusilli alla Roma, and Capellini Pomodoro.)

Hey Alex -- you're like a culinary Calvin & Hobbs, always adventurous, mostly trouble, reliably hilarious

The DeCecco pasta box says it is slow dried for 18 hours….low temp, longer time. Love the videos!

Loved this episode Alex! When those first great pieces of pasta appeared from the machine, I FELT that shift from nerves to excitement. Top notch cinematography!

As someone who has worked in a kitchen that made our own pasta with a proper heavy duty extruder, first thing I was taught was to do a 2:1 ratio of flour to liquid. We used a mix of egg yolks and water with semolina. Next thing, when making the dough, we would have everything mix in the extruder on the knead setting until it fully combined and came together as a crumbly dough, not crumble. While the point made in the factory episode by Monsieur Felicetti holds true at an industrial scale, you also have to consider temperature and humidity, the two hardest factors to control when making a dough. Finally, in the drying process, it was mentioned that their method of drying included gradual removal of the water from the pasta in phases. From my experience as we freeze dried our pasta, the goal is to minimise damage to the gluten present in the dough which holds the key to maintaining the shape of the pasta. As such, it can be hypothesised that your drying process was too aggressive for the pasta to handle with the rapid water loss. There are pointers from Pastaevangelists who noted that homemade pasta made with the recipe you used should be dried at room temperature and for 12-24 hours and i'm guessing that you did the same back in episode 4 of the series where the orechiette you made were left to dry on the bench overnight. Just my thoughts and comparison between what you've done to my experience. Issues like these have a lot of factors and more than likely, for yours it's just too aggressive and too rapid drying. i would suggest 32-38 celsius and check in 2 hour-4 hour intervals to see how it goes.

The best part about these videos is the little progress bar in the sponsor section. I can skip the advertisement without chopping off little bits of the actual content that way.

Finally, can't wait to watch it

Hey Alex! Really loved the filming, editing and the pace of this episode!

I just always love how he gets really into the meat and potatoes of whatever it is he wants to make. Like for most of us, if we wanna make a pasta dish, we're probably gonna just use storebought stuff or maybe if we feel like it use an egg pasta. But Alex always just goes the extra mile to truly get behind the scenes into the dishes he loves. As a worldbuilder, and conlanger I respect that lol.

I may or may not have shouted "we did it!" when the pasta extruded.

Hi, always a fan of your videos and can't wait to see the culminating of your journey through the dry pasta mastery. Would it be possible to post the brand and model of the pasta machine that worked well once this series is at the last episode. If love to add this to my home appliances, my kids love my fresh pasta but would be fun to start the dry ones too. Thank you for your eternal curiosity

Hi Alex when I was young my mother had a dry pasta shop and i had working wit her, and the dryer were at room temperature between 25-35 and let the pasta dry for 2/3 hours, but the basic things was that the all dryer pasta machine has free flowing air , and not recycling the hot air, so for example new air from the bottom pushed up by the fan , and than is freely to disperse from the top o it. Hope you will find the sweet spot of the drying process.

It's so good to see you get a successful result with the new machine. I imagine the drying process needs to be longer and cooler, but that's just an intuitive guess as I've never made dry pasta. Good luck!

Love the fact the box says "FRAGILE, made in Italy" 😂

I'm living on this pasta series. It's all I'm eating these days!

That's a cool bit of kit! Loving every episode of this journey you're taking us along for Alex!, I just wish we got to taste the lovely creations but we still get to share that experience of the journey, all the best mate. :)

The pasta machine series is what originally got me interested in this channel so extremely glad to see another episode in the pasta machine saga

This has reminded a bit about cooling down VERY HOT GLASS . Molten or just extremely hot glass has a severe problem of un-even-ness (english isnt my first language either so bare with me here)of pressure between each crystal that makes up the piece, so it needs to go trough a process called annealing , where you basically make the temperature of said piece of glass go down little by little, over a long period of time , so that each crystal can cool down and relocate themselves and even out the pressure between its neighbours . Now i am no glass maker or pasta maker , but to me it seems like a similar issue is happening here , where certain parts of the semolina that makes up the pasta are getting hydrated at different rates and so drying at different rates, making for an uneven amount of pressure between each grain , which escalates over time to make for large patches of uneaven parts inside the pasta, which causes it to shatter and crack. I think maybe a slower drying process with lower temperature and or allowing the pasta to rest in it's water for a certain period of time before drying could make for a better result Although again I am no pasta professional or glass professional, (tho i am aspiring to get an astrophysics degree rn) so this is merely a guess , but i thought it could be cool to mention it Idk

Great looking rigatoni! I own a small pasta company in the US. It's possible to make really good looking pasta with the Phillips Avance pasta machine. It's only $300. I use the Phillips machine at the moment to make all my pasta. On another note: you can substitute the water with beer or wine for your pasta dough and it turns out fantastic. But anyways my company is called Newport Pasta Co. located in Rhode Island in the US. Feel free to check it out. I have about 25 different pasta dies.

Cheers! Alex! You made it! Been following nonstop through out the process. Salute!

It's been such a long time since I saw one of your videos my friend ! And they still getting better and better. Entertaining, funny and didactic. Amazing! Now I'm hungry...

Alex i use a La parmigiana d55 pasta machine Just watched your video It appears to me your mix is too dry ( a little) you also air dry in ventilated trays You can also bag it fresh with a small amount of rice flour

Success! Or at least most of the way there. I love this series and I'll be watching with bated breath for the next episode. FWIW, my Italian nonna/grandmother dried pasta on coat hangers indoors during summer. Maybe this isn't the most helpful hint for rigatoni... 😁

Oh man, Alex, I love how you keep on taking us with you on your fantastic journey through the world of food. It always gives me so much pleasure watching your videos!!! Mercy beaucoup!!!!

Used to work at an italian restaurant, and we found out by boiling the die before putting in on the machine would help us achive a perfectly smooth pasta everytime. The heat helps it to slide out og the machine

I use a Bottene Lillo Due, which produces uniform texture. But first, you need to heat the die. Place the die on a pan with water and slowly bring to just unde a boil. At the same time, mix the flour mixture with another die in the machine to prevent spillage and mix as usual. Once the first die is heated, stop the machine and remove the secondary die, replacing it with the heated die then extrude and cut. The drying process is your problem. It needs to be done on LOW HEAT over a long time. The temperature that you use was too high, causing cracking. Better to place the extruded pasta on a drying tray made especially for drying pasta and let it dry at room temperature for several days. As an example, top quality commercial pastas, like Mono Grano, are dried at "low heat" for several days in special temperature controlled drying rooms. On the packages of these high quality pastas, you will see the words "colored basso," meaning "low heat." But even I'd your extruded pasta is not fully dry, you can still cook it, since cooking it in water is the way to re-hydrate it. Thus, if there is some residual moisture prior to cooking, just adjust the cooking time and taste periodically to determine doneness. Bon chance e buona fortuna!

On a related note, can you release the CAD for the pasta/ramen machine you and “This Old Tony” made? It would be absolutely magnific if we could replicate the design!

Tu es honnête et tu partage tout le processus et non pas seulement la partie qui est bien reussie. J'adore tes videos

I love the vocabulary of ESL speakers! Luminosity is a brilliant word. Bravo for your use of such ... colorful .. word selection

Salut Alex! You know that you really need some extremely overengineered arduino-controlled knife attachment for that pastamaker ^^ As always, wonderful content.

why does this series feel like a thriller? I'm at the edge of my seat: is it going to work, is it going to break?

I don't even like cooking but I keep watching because you're a great storyteller and I enjoy watching the process. well done!

You can't deny the content that Alex makes is like no other culinary channel on RU-vid. Hats off to his never ending creativity.

First the pasta machine from This Old Tony and now this! 🤩

Ok but that first piece of pasta... His expression changed from smiling to wtf did I just waste a shit ton of money.. 😭.. but yes.. it was just the first few inches..thank God ... They look so niiiiice tho 🤌🤌🤌

We have a similar, but bigger machine at work with different pasta forms and a automatic cutter. We dont dry the pasta, we put it in the freezer. We make a lot pasta at once and store it in the freezer, when we need them, we take it out into the boiling water... works perfect.

You're getting there, slowly but surely. Can't wait for the next instalment!

What model machine did you get? Also if i ever get one I’d love to use an affiliate link to support you!

For some reason I thought you would make you own machine xD

Discovered your channel while hungry for Italian food, and what a great channel. I've learnt so much from you. Keep it up :D

Alex the intro has the respect line from a really great episode of CHUCK, it makes me smile every time thanks for including it!!!

this Series made me apreciate how lucky we live in the 21st century where everything is prepared to us, you dont need to make pasta from scratch at home, just go to your supermarket and buy whatever you like.

Very dramatic, I love the reverb on machine assembly. Nice Video, Thanks!

Hey Alex, I love your awesome video's, tasty dishes and your overall aproach on trying new methods and technics. Your problemsolving skills really show that you have an engeneering background.

Alex, so excited to see you created your own skillshare class! I clicked and joined in without a second thought.

Hearing you say you've got your own class on Skillshare, made me smile. So happy for you, Alex!

Brilliant Alex! Really enjoying every episode in this quest! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

It might help if you try drying them at a lower temperature, and rely more on air circulation and less on heat to do the drying. That could help the pasta shrink more uniformly and avoid breaking

I love the 80s 90s cartoon sounds you use from time to time love it

You are a very talented filmmaker! Some of the best images on RU-vid! Thanks!

Great video, as always! Excited to see what you come up with!

Finally..congratulations 💪🏾

The face of Alex when the machine start to extruder, was pure joy, love it

Alex the only French guy I know whose obsessed with the perfect Italian pasta. I love when he shops online successes and fails. Water content is a big part of food, art and so m any things. Now I’m lusting after his pasta machine marone.

Congrats on the cooking class Alex! Are you considering opening a restaurant, or a line of products? Seeing your joy in these videos makes me happy!

Aaaand….cliffhanger. Awesome work as usual. I look forward to the next installment. Merci! Cheers from Texas!

Fantastic editing in this video, alex!

Congrats! My motto in life (one of many) is “2 forward and 1 back, still good!” My other one is “better than before”. Keep up the good work.

Always so chill to just watch you make pasta or whatever silly thing you do :D

You are really progressing in the dry pasta endeavor now, next step will most definitely be manageable.

I am so happy to see this video! There was such a long pause between, I was scared something happened.

Another awesome video.. obviously.. without a doubt. Anything that's wet that cracks during any drying process means it's being dried too fast OR too hot. Try at 50c for the same time or 45c for the same time and see the difference. The next thing is, don't dry it out completely, get it to say 90% then let it cool/dry naturally, by doing that the pasta will acclimatise slowly and the tension in the pasta will ease as it's cooling.

I don't know if you are really good at conveying the excitement, or if I'm really good at getting excited, but I really liked this unboxing and first trial.

with the dedication u have brother. i hope that one day u become an world renowned chef. waiting for that day.

The italian chef Vincenzo, from Vincenzo's Plate recently released a video where he rates commercial dry pasta and explains how slow drying is so important for the final quality of the product.

Alex you are one of the most interesting cooking channels I know!

You're really drying this series out...j/k I love it, keep it going forever and I am definitely considering buying one of these machines now.

To make this right, you have to experiment, sample and map different drying curves T(t) while sensoring moisture content (etc.) in order to see which sweet spot returns the perfect output :) An arduino-based solution to automatically control your Sahara oven would rock! Also, as a future TODO thing, it surely would contribute to perfection trying to mod the extruder's mixer so you could do both pre-mix / final mix in a approx. vacuum environment and feet it to the extruder screw

The reason why you are getting warped pieces right after extrusion is also gravity-related. The dough is still warm enough that, when it comes out of the extruder, its weight is letting it slightly collapse: to help with this issue, many industrial machines have the extrusion head facing downwards rather than sideways. So, either you find a way to cool down a little bit the dough (or the extrusion head) or you adapt the machine in a way that the head points to the floor 😅.

Congratulations on the new Skillshare class, Alex! It's going to be a blast, I bet!

Bon travail Alex ! Cheers from San Diego California

The failure in the pasta drying looks like what you see when wood is kiln dried too fast. It’s referred to as case hardening. There is likely an optimum moisture content in dry pasta and and specific drying curve. Too fast or too dry and the pasta breaks from the internal stresses. Might need to brought down to specific moisture level then left for a while so the stresses can work themselves out before taking it to the final level.

Alex, my brother and i always look forward to your uploads and we love trying out your recipes at home (we are from Turkey) we hope to meet you oneday!