What’s the Best Flour to Use for Homemade Pasta? | America's Test Kitchen (2025)

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What’s the Best Flour to Use for Homemade Pasta? | America's Test Kitchen? ›

Pasta dough also needs some plasticity for it to be moulded into all of those wonderful shapes. All-purpose flour does what it says on the tin, so it's perfectly fine to use for making pasta. However, most pasta recipes will recommend either semola or “00” flour.

Pasta dough also needs some plasticity for it to be moulded into all of those wonderful shapes. All-purpose flour does what it says on the tin, so it's perfectly fine to use for making pasta. However, most pasta recipes will recommend either semola or “00” flour.

Semola and semolina flour are mainly used for making pasta, couscous, and some rustic cakes. Semolina has a coarse texture similar to polenta, while semola is flour. You might use semolina to make a breakfast porridge or sweet pudding, or under your pizza dough to keep it from sticking.

The semolina flour adds a bit more structure to the dough, which is helpful for shapes like garganelli or farfalle where you want the pasta to “stand up.” You could replace the semolina flour with equal parts 00 flour for a more tender and soft dough, which could be good for something like tagliatelle.

You can also make pasta with plain or plain strong flour, but it will be harder to work with. Self-raising flour shouldn't be used to make pasta as it puffs up when cooked. See our guide for how to make pasta for more info on pasta shapes and ingredients.

Besides the level of the grind, the other big difference between “00” flour and all-purpose flour is how the gluten in each flour behaves. The gluten from durum wheat flour tends to be strong but not very elastic, while the gluten in red wheat flour is both strong and elastic.

Type 00 Flour (sometimes called Doppio Zero)

Type 00 flour is the quintessential Italian flour synonymous with quality. It's extra refined, very soft, and stark white in color because it contains none of the wheat bran.

Durum Flour

Its strength means you can use it for shaped pastas, like orecchiette, as well as extruded pasta, such as spaghetti. When cooked, pasta made with durum flour retains a toothsome al dente quality; the flour also imparts a lovely pale-yellow hue.

Pasta manufacturers typically use milled durum wheat (semolina, durum granulars, and durum flour) in pasta production, although farina and flour from common wheat are occasionally used.

Grano duro is slightly yellow, more granular, and more commonly used for pasta and some breads in the south of Italy. It's also knows as durum wheat flour. Grano tenero is generally what we think of as white flour, and is more broadly used in bread, pizza, and pastry, and northern pasta doughs.

Is 00 flour worth it for pasta? ›

Why use 00 flour? Because 00 flour is so fine, it makes a finer, more responsive dough that won't tear when you roll it into thin, delicate pasta strips or shape it into a crispy pizza base.

The Test Kitchen warns that plain durum wheat flour can lead to gummy pasta dough, so it's much preferable to choose durum wheat semolina. Bob's Red Mill explains that durum semolina has 13% protein or more, compared to just 8-11% protein in all-purpose flour, concrete proof of durum's superior strength.

Double zero flour, also known as doppio zero or 00 flour, is a finely ground Italian flour commonly used to make pasta and pizza dough. In Italy and other parts of Europe, grind sizes vary from double zero to two. Double zero is the finest grind, and two is the coarsest.

One of the most popular flours for making pasta is semolina flour, which is a coarsely ground flour made from a particularly hard variety of wheat called durum.

When the flour is kneaded with moisture (from the eggs), the protein forms strands of gluten that give the pasta its structure and strength. As well as providing water for the gluten, eggs also give fat, which enriches the dough, giving it a smooth, silky finish.

No, in almost every case, you should not rinse pasta after it's cooked. It's true that rinsing noodles or pasta after cooking halts the cooking process. “This is also known as shocking,” Tiess says. But rinsing also removes the starch water after the noodles are strained, which is what helps adhere sauce to noodles.

Semolina Flour

Semolina's coarse texture makes chewy, hearty pasta that rolls easily through a pasta machine; it also gives the noodles a slightly coarser texture on the exterior so sauce clings better.

Semolina vs All Purpose Flour

In addition to its golden hue, semolina flour has a nutty flavor and more protein than all-purpose flour. Its gluten protein content creates an elastic dough, perfect for kneading and stretching for pasta. In contrast, neutrality defines all-purpose flour.

To make pasta properly the flour must have at least 12 percent protein content to guarantee true al dente. We can mix in semolina to give the pasta dough the proper content, with the only really noticeable difference being the ash content.

Too much flour makes the pasta tough. Not enough will result in runny lumps that are impossible to roll through pasta maker.