History of pasta in America

It is a common belief about pasta is that it was brought to Italy from China by Marco Polo during the 13th century. Early Spanish settlers were among the first to bring pasta to America.

In 1848, French immigrant Antoine Zerega opened first pasta factory in USA on the Brooklyn waterfront. The company, A. Zerega's Sons Pasta Factory, stayed in the family for over 172 years until it was recently acquired by Philadelphia Macaroni.

In 1901, Felice Maldari started F.Maldari Manufacturers of pasta dies. At that time, the dies were made by hand by immigrants from his hometown of Bari, Italy. Because of the special skills involved, pasta die manufacturing has always been a small industry.

During the late 19th century, when a large group of immigrants relocated from Italy to America (most from Naples), pasta became a common food in the states.

Early pasta machines were found in Naples in the 17th century. One pasta legend tells us that the first pasta machine was made by Spadaccinni in 1833, and commissioned by King Ferdinand. The King reportedly asked Spadaccinni to invent a pasta machine after witnessing peasants kneading pasta with their feet.

Acknowledging that there was a faster way to make pasta, the hand-crank pasta machine was patented in Cleveland by Italian immigrant Angelo Vitantonio in 1906.

In 1914 I. DeFrancisci & Son of Brooklyn, New York, built their first pasta machine. I. DeFrancisci & Son, under its current name of DEMACO remains today as the only industrial pasta machine manufacturer in America.
History of pasta in America

The history of Swiss pasta

By the mid-17th century, pasta had become an everyday food, no longer the preserve of the papal court or the tables of nobility – although it was more often eaten with the simple combination of olive oil and cheese.

In 1731, the Swiss cloister Disentis purchased a “torculum pro formadis maccaronibus” (a thread press machine), a screw press to make hollow macaroni noodles.

In 1836, a cookbook from Bern published a recipe for ‘Maccaroni’ that called for Parmesan or Swiss Emmental cheese and oven-baking.

In 1838, the first Swiss pasta factory was established in Lucerne by Kaspar and Balthasar Ronca brothers. They used water power for manufacturing pasta.

The founding era of the Swiss pasta industry is considered to be the period from 1838 to 1860. Several pasta factories in German-speaking and Western Switzerland were established during this time. The world’s first commercial production of macaroni was in Switzerland in 1872. Pasta accelerating in popularity to the central Alps during the construction of the Gotthard tunnel, which started in 1872 as a lot of Italian workers came to Switzerland.

In 1920, Switzerland had 78 pasta factories. The limited transport means at the time fostered the number of local manufacturers. With the expansion of the railway and road network, however, local production became less and less important and the import of pasta grew in importance.

In the 1930s Älplermagronen was invented. Älplermagronen is a rustic Swiss dish that can be translated as Alpine macaroni, but it is more commonly known as herdsman’s macaroni. The basic version is prepared by layering cooked pasta and potatoes with cheese and cream, and the combination is then baked in the oven and served topped with onion rings, applesauce, and bacon.
The history of Swiss pasta

Mechanization of pasta production

Although pasta products were first introduced in Italy in the 13th century, efficient manufacturing equipment and high-quality ingredients have been available only since the 20th century. Prior to the industrial revolution, most pasta products were-made by hand in small shops.

In 1800, a first mechanical device for making pasta appeared in Italy. The first American pasta factory was opened in Brooklyn, New York, in 1848, by a Frenchman named Antoine Zerega, who spread his spaghetti strands on the roof to dry in the sunshine.

Around 1850, the first hand-operated pasta press was built. By 1860 more elaborated presses had been had been made. By increasing the popularity of pasta it required more efficient production process to be developed.

By early 1900s, mixers, kneaders, hydraulic piston type extrusion presses and drying cabinets were available for batch manufacturing of pasta.

First extrusion process was invented in 1707 by Joseph Bramah. The first precursors to the modern extruder were developed in the early 19th century. Since 1930s, extrusion method had been used for production of dry pasta.
Mechanization of pasta production

Pasta processing in Italy during early days

Pasta was consumed in Italy as early as 600 BC. Italy is generally as home of pasta. Italian pastas namely Macaroni and spaghetti are being traditionally made from semolina flour from durum wheat.

The word "pasta" comes from the Italian word "maccarruni" which means "made into a dough by force". In Italian language maccarruni (macaroni) called as "pasta".

During 1270s, there is a reference to a soldier in the northern Italian city of Genoa, who owned a basket of “macaronis.” A century before, the Muslim geographer al-Idrisi wrote of seeing pasta produced on Sicily. He wrote that the art of making spaghetti or the thinner vermicelli, reached Sicily with the North African caravans in about AD 11oo. On that island they found the essential requisites: hard-grain semolina wheat, sweet water and abundant sun and wind to dry the rolled-out product.

In the 1500s dry pasta manufacturers were founded all over the Italy. The dough was mixed by foot and compressed by 3-4 workers sitting on a long wooden pool. The dough was presses into bronze plate as vermicelli, trennette, lasagnette, farfalle, pennette, conchiglie and other pasta forms, still known today.

Pasta’s great companion, the tomato was bought to Italy by the Spaniards and appears to have been grown in Siena in the 1560s and the Naples area in 1596.

The French Dominican monk Jean-Baptiste Labat (1663–1738), who traveled through Italy at the turn of the 18th century, discovered a flourishing pasta industry there. The combination of the manual brake and the extrusion press, which began to spread in the second half of the 16th century, had revolutionized the production of pasta, considerably increasing output without in any way harming quality.
Pasta processing in Italy during early days

History of Modern Pasta Processing

Mechanization of pasta manufacturing began during the industrial revolution. The first mechanical devices for pasta processing were developed in the early 1700s.

Pasta making in Italy had become something of a Neapolitan specialty by the nineteenth century and it was in Naples that production began to be fully commercialized and industrialized.

Extrusion processes were used by then, hydraulic presses were designed in the mid-1800s, and late in the nineteenth century kneaders came into use.

It was also probably in the 1800s that the marriage of pasta with tomatoes in cooking occurred. Southern Italy is an ideal for growing of tomatoes. During this century pasta processing was a batch manufacturing process which by its nature was laborious and restricted productivity.

It was not until the early twentieth century that drying cabinets became available. Pasta processing remained a batch manufacturing process until the 1930s, when continuous extrusion using an extrusion auger revolutionized the process. The Buhler Brothers from Switzerland were the first to incorporate an extrusion worm into a continuous press.

Automatic dryers were the added to the continuous with Augusto Fava created with manufacturing and installing the first continuous pasta dryer. The first continuous automatic production line that processed semolina into pasta ready for packaging was designed in 1946.
History of Modern Pasta Processing

History of Pasta Processing

Pasta is a generic term used in reference to the whole range of products commonly known as spaghetti, macaroni and noodles.

When the humans discovered agriculture, they also invented bread and pasta. Actually, pasta is a kind of “bread” made by flour and water. Opposite bread, pasta is a flat strips or small squares.
Italy is generally regarded as the home of pasta products. In the fifteenth century, Italians learned how to make noodles from the Germans, who had previously learned the process in their travels to Asia.

In the 1500s dry pasta manufacturers were founded all over the Italy. The dough was mixed by foot and compressed by 3-4 workers sitting on a long wooden pool. The dough was presses into bronze plate as vermicelli, trennette, lasagnette, farfalle, pennette, conchiglie and other pasta forms, still known today.

The short forms were kept in drawers while the long forms were dried in the open.

The first mechanical devices for pasta manufacturing were invented in the 1800s. Around 1850, the first hand-operated pasta press was built. By 1860 more elaborated presses had been had been made. By increasing the popularity of pasta it required more efficient production process to be developed.

By early 1900s, mixers, kneaders, hydraulic piston type extrusion presses and drying cabinets were available for batch manufacturing of pasta.

In 1933, the first continuous single screw using low temperature drying profiles that mimicked open air drying conditions typical of the region around Naples, Italy. It replacing the batch system.

Extruder was developed by Joseph Bramah, in England in 1797 before applied to pasta processing.

It required 18 to 20 hours to dry pasta when using a low temperature drying profile. High temperature drying (60 to 80 degree C) of pasta was introduced in 1974 and ultra high temperature (80 to 100 degree C) drying was introduced in the late 1980s.

Drying at high or ultrahigh temperatures has reduced drying time of long goods (e.g., spaghetti) to about 10 and 6 hours, respectively.

Today, pasta manufacturing is totally automated with pasta presses capable of producing spaghetti at 3,500 kg/h and macaroni at 8,000 kg/h.

History of Pasta Processing