Finally, we looked at the ingredients that contribute to gluten formation. When pasta dough is mixed and kneaded, water hydrates proteins in the flour to form gluten, which gives the dough strength and elasticity. Pasta with more gluten is firmer, chewier, and more intact, while pasta with less gluten is softer and stickier. The textures of our favorite angel hair products confirmed that they contained more gluten; our tasters described them as firm, toothsome, and chewy, regardless of the thickness of their strands. We looked at ingredient labels and found that all the products we tested shared one simple ingredient: durum wheat (sometimes fortified with vitamins and minerals), usually in the form of semolina. However, we noticed that our top two pastas both contain finely milled durum flour in addition to the coarse semolina used in all the other products in our lineup. Durum flour is a by-product of semolina production that is often discarded, but some pasta manufacturers add it to their pastas to cut costs. However, Jan Delcour, head of the Laboratory of Food Chemistry and Biochemistry at Belgium’s Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, told us that it may also have a textural benefit. Pastas that contain durum flour likely also contain more gluten than products made with semolina alone because the finer durum flour hydrates (and thus forms gluten) more readily than coarse semolina. The durum flour in our top two products is likely responsible for their firm textures—and, as a bonus, the reason why they’re the least expensive of the products we tried.
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