The Pastamakers
nU Nooz Artisan Pasta is chef driven and developed. Born of our interest in slow foods, Chef Kyle originally started experimenting with handmade pasta on menus in the '90s in Santa Barbara, California. That now culminates with the introduction of nU Nooz Artisan Pasta. We make artisan bronze-die cut, hand rolled, and hand-pressed pastas. We focus on high quality local ingredients, superior technique, and consistency to produce truly unique artisan pasta. The main ingredients are Utah Hard Red Wheat flour, Durum Wheat semolina flour, Water, and Sea Salt. The Utah Hard Red Wheat is grown on small farms in Utah, the Durum Wheat on small farms in Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota and milled into semolina in Collinston, Utah by Central Milling. We use Redmond Real Ancient Sea Salt from Redmond, Utah. While most of our pastas are vegan, the few marked "alla uovo" (with eggs) contain eggs sourced locally from free-roaming, vegetarian-fed, heritage breed hens. The stuffed pastas feature cheeses made by Utah artisanal cheese makers, and fresh local produce. We avoid unnecessarily expensive imported ingredients, and are proceeding with the goal of sustainability and zero waste in everything we do. That means we do things like reuse produce boxes, and use 100% recycled, compostable and biodegradable packaging. We hope you'll appreciate our commitment to our local farmers and artisans as well as our Earth-conscious business ethics.
Using these local ingredients and over 20 years of experience as a professional chef, Kyle Lore makes these pastas differently than commodity pastas. Most pasta sold commercially is extruded through plastic or Teflon dies that leave a smooth surface that, when cooked, is slippery, so the sauce will not adhere to the pasta. That pasta is flimsy on your fork as well as in your mouth. Traditional Italian pasta is extruded through hand-made bronze dies that leave a rough textured surface on the pasta, just like nU Nooz Artisan Pasta.
In researching local wheat to use for our pasta we discovered the story of Salt Lake City’s original “Pasta King” as described by Utah History To Go:
“At the turn of the century Antonio Ferro opened a small store on West Second South in Salt Lake City where he thereafter launched the Western Macaroni Manufacturing Company. Eventually marketed under the "Queen's Taste" label, no less than 45 different varieties of pasta products would be manufactured by Ferro and his associates. It seems that long before pasta dishes became trendy items on restaurant menus in Utah the state had a pasta king.”
The process is further described:
“The Western Macaroni factory used Utah eggs and Turkey Red flour made from wheat produced on Utah and Idaho dry farms, but 80 percent of the flour used came from the harder durum wheat grown in Minnesota. The large mixers in the factory used 300 pounds of flour at a time. The stiff dough or paste moved from mixer to kneading machine to pressing machines where the various types of pasta were extruded. Racks of pasta were then taken to one of the many drying rooms for 36 to 40 hours.”
http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/statehood_and_the_progressive_era/thepastakingofthemountainwest.html
We air dry our pasta slowly just as Antonio did, unlike the mass-produced pastas that use blast kilns to "dry" the air, which partially cooks the pasta before it ever reaches your pot of water and causes a plasticine finish, destroying the earthy flavor of the great wheats that should be used in the creation of pasta.
Over a century later we are using the same ingredients, tools and techniques to make our pasta.
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