Homemade Sourdough Pasta Recipe - An Italian in my Kitchen (2025)

FAQs

Do Italians use sourdough? ›

Most importantly, bread should always be eaten with other food, but it should not be eaten with a starchy meal. So you'll rarely see it served with pasta in Italy! Italy has an incredible variety of bread, with many regional versions of flatbread, sourdough, and your traditional loaf.

Another big difference, notes The Pantry Mama, is that sourdough pasta can be cooked in as little as two minutes, while other types of pasta can take around 11 minutes. The bacteria that gives sourdough its digestive benefits also creates a tart flavor and chewy texture in sourdough pasta, according to Masterclass.

The sourdough provides for good digestion and your stomach is going to feel good, resulting in a 'Happy Tummy. ' The combination of carbohydrates and plant proteins inherent in these cereal crops make them the ideal food for our planetary survival.

Sourdough bread (Pane toscano a lievitazione naturale)

In Italy, the natural leaven is called “lievito naturale” or “lievito madre” (the mother) and it is regularly used by the Italian artisan bakeries to make large regional breads like toscano and pugliese for example.

Pane Di Casa generally has a more dense crumb with a crunchy crust (due to the semolina flour). Sourdough on the other hand has a more chewy crust and a more open crumb. The flavor and texture of pane di casa bread is different to traditional sourdough because of the different leaving agents.

The addition of salt is imperative! The water used for cooking pasta should be as salty as the sea. I use a minimum of 2 tablespoons of kosher salt or “sale grosso” (big grains of salt), per pound of pasta.

The reason is simple: it's all in the flour. Dry pasta is made with only two ingredients, flour and water. In Italy, that flour comes from a kind of wheat called grano duro (“hard wheat”), a completely different species from the wheat used here to make all-purpose flour and bread products.

The type of flour used — all-purpose, whole wheat, rye — can affect the nutritional content of sourdough bread, says Wee. But generally speaking, sourdough bread is a healthy option and can be eaten regularly as part of a nutritious, balanced diet.

Sourdough bread may be easier to digest than white bread for some people. According to some studies, sourdough bread acts as a prebiotic, which means that the fiber in the bread helps feed the “good” bacteria in your intestines. These bacteria are important for maintaining a stable, healthy digestive system.

Can sourdough heal your gut? ›

The gut is the body's first line of defense against infection. The bacteria in the gut play an important role in fighting off harmful bacteria and viruses. Eating sourdough bread can help to improve the diversity of gut bacteria, which can lead to improved immune function.

In the southern part of Europe, where panettone is still made with sourdough as leavening, sourdough has become less common in the 20th century; it has been replaced by the faster-growing baker's yeast, sometimes supplemented with longer fermentation rests to allow some bacterial activity to build flavor.

From Egypt, sourdough bread-making spread north to ancient Greece, where it was first baked at home by women and later, in bakeries. The Romans learned the art of bread baking from the Greeks, making improvements in kneading and baking.

Leaveners: To make Tuscan bread, bakers use a yeast mixture called biga to create a fluffy, light crumb. Biga is made with flour, water, and active dry yeast, combined the night before baking. Sourdough bread doesn't require yeast; instead, it rises using a sourdough starter mixture.