[comeonbro]

There is a dry pasta I use that, long story short, comes without a listed cooking time, whose correct cooking time I have experimentally determined to be ~18 minutes (though remarkably flexible, good at a much wider range than "normal"). I like it quite a lot (even though it seems to have the teflon-die surface rather than the bronze-die surface).

I think greater pasta thickness is underexplored, and the teflon-vs-bronze die thing as the highest determinant of pasta quality, while not nothing, is slightly-overstated r*dditry.

[banannaise]

Bronze-die pasta has an obvious and substantial textural difference from teflon-die pasta. The stickiness of the bronze requires more force from the extruder, but results in a rougher surface on the pasta, because it literally sticks to the die.

Bronze-cut pasta holds sauce much better, especially for thinner sauces. It also makes your pasta water more starchy, since it loses more material during cooking. These things seem very obvious to me via my observations as a cook who uses both from time to time (but mostly the bronze stuff).

Both properties can be very useful (the first to everyone, the second just to those who use their pasta water in the sauce step).

It's good to question our assumptions from time to time, but there's no reason to just deny something like this with absolutely nothing to back it up.

[comeonbro]

I don't deny that it is beneficial (it clearly is, in my direct experience as well): I doubt that it is the highest determinant of quality, and suspect that even more basic properties like thickness have been systematically neglected and may be more consequential.

[Luker88]

> and the teflon-vs-bronze die thing ....is slightly-overstated r*dditry

So, there's this thing that I heard, but I never found confirmation, maybe someone here can help.

Apparently bronze by itself can't be used as a cooking utensil since it loses material too easily.

When they use bronze for extruding and such, they have to coat it in teflon to have a legal bypass.

But it all remains kinda brittle, and now you are eating teflon and bronze!

I simplified it all, but I am not a material expert nor a law expert, so could anyone debunk or confirm?

[frm88]

This sounded interesting, so I went and read a few articles. It seems, dies come in 5 categories: bronze, brass, steel, teflon coated (various bases) and plastic [0].

The bronze (and even brass) are uncoated and don't seem to lose material, on the contrary, they seem to get a patina with use. From what I read, bronze pasta is extruded at lower speed and temperature to account for the material (and the desired texture of the pasta). From an engineering point of view, this article give more insight [1].

[0] https://flavor365.com/pasta-die-materials-the-ultimate-guide...

[1] https://pastasty.com/the-engineering-of-extrusion-how-bronze...

[ars]

Eating teflon is harmless, it goes out the same way it goes in. (It's not a PFAS, since it's missing the alkyl chain tail.)

[Levitating]

Do you happen to know the brand/type/number?