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You are here: Home / Travel / Europe / Italy / Tales of Tuscany – Lari and Martelli Pasta

Tales of Tuscany – Lari and Martelli Pasta

December 10, 2012 by Fiona Maclean 3 Comments

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Artisan Martelli Pasta from Lari, Tuscany:

I’ve come to the conclusion that a week in Tuscany is really not long enough.  Even if you have a schedule that seems to involve doing at least three major events a day, you will only touch the edges of this part of Italy. And when things don’t quite work according to schedule, you have to make a decision about whether to just try anyway.   Martelli Pasta was on our list to visit, but we didn’t  hear back from them, so decided on a speculative visit to the artisan pasta factory in Lari, Tuscany on the way home from Pisa one evening.

We arrived in the pretty hilltop village at about 7pm.  Probably a little late.

In the local bar I drank wine and noticed the distinctive Martelli pasta packs on the shelves.

“It’s just up the hill and around the corner”

lari  Tuscany

lari castle Tuscany

 

And, as we’d been told, Martelli just around the corner. Founded in 1929, Martelli pasta is regarded as being one of the top Italian artisan pastas and the business is still entirely family run.

Martelli pasta factory in Lari

We were greeted by a happy man in Martelli yellow who told us that ‘everything was finished for the day’ but then happily switched everything back on again so that we could see exactly how the pasta was made.

martelli pasta

 

It is just flour and water, no eggs, no oil…even simpler than the version I made in Sicily. BUT it depends on the RIGHT type of flour, ‘Semola de Grano Duro’, a very hard, yellow flour from wheat grown in the south of Italy or, in other hot dry climates like Canada.  In the factory, the main mixing is done by machine, but then the pasta shapes are created by pressing the dough through traditional bronze cast moulds

martelli pasta

Once the pasta shape is formed, it is air dried very slowly, at 33-36c for around 50 hours.

martelli pasta drying

 

Our host explained that this process gives the pasta a rough texture which helps any sauce hold to the pasta better.  Once dried, the pasta is hand packed.

martelli pasta packing

Notably, this leaves spaghetti with hooped ends, rather than uniform straight sticks…and our enthusiastic host explained that was a good way to tell if the pasta was  machine packed or hand packed.

lari tuscany

Of course, we walked back to the shop and bought packs to take home.  Then went for a little walk through the pretty medieval village before heading off home, happy that we’d caught a little of the passion and enthusiasm that is Martelli.

lari tuscany, Italy

 

Filed Under: Italy, Travel Tagged With: Pasta, Tuscany

About Fiona Maclean

London based freelance writer and marketing consultant. I edit London-Unattached.com and write for a number of other publications. With a music degree and a background in marketing across many sectors, my passions include all types of music, food, restaurants, wine and travel

Comments

  1. Andrea Naomi says

    December 14, 2012 at 12:52 pm

    What a beautiful little journey…I absolutely adore the old world feel 🙂

    Reply
  2. Cindy Jacks says

    December 13, 2012 at 4:37 pm

    Once again you have me longing to visit Tuscany 🙂 There’s nothing look a good artisan pasta!

    Reply
  3. Jess @UsedYorkCity says

    December 11, 2012 at 1:07 pm

    Ohh, I need to find some hooped end pasta now…mission accepted!:-) And that was so awesome of him to to switch on the machines and give you guys a demo…don’t you just love traveling?!

    Reply

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