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It depends a lot on how you make it. First thing, as others have already mentioned, it is fresh pasta, not dry pasta, these two are different things. Different ingredients, different preparation and of course, different taste. You effectively can't make dry pasta at home, it requires specialized and rather expensive equipment. Stay with a good store-bought brand, DeSecco is fine and Barilla has a huge lineup of varying levels of quality. I like the "trafilata al bronzo" kind, they have a rougher texture which is better for making sauces. Artisan pasta may not be worth the price. For fresh pasta, you can also buy in stores, but these are worth making yourself. When making them yourself, you can select your flour, your recipe, you can also put other ingredients than the basics if you want, say, green pasta. Depending on your machine, you can make the shape or thickness you want. You can even also make ramen-style (alkaline) pasta, with kansui. It may not taste objectively better, if there is such a thing, but it may very much taste better to you. Also, I like to cook my homemade pasta immediately after making them. The dough can sit for a while, but after that, it goes straight from the machine to the pot, one portion at a time. I use a strainer like they have in ramen shops, so I can reuse the water between portions. Usually, when one portion have finished cooking (it only takes about 3 minutes), the other is ready. This way, they are less likely to stick, even without flour or corn starch. Obviously, it doesn't scale, and you can't do that with store bought pasta. BTW, I use rollers, not an extruder. The rollers are a bit more labor intensive, but I prefer it over an extruder, it also tends to be cheaper. But this is a personal preference, the end product is simply different. |