Semolina versus egg dough: the two doughs of Italian pasta
The difference between durum semolina pasta and egg pasta: flour, water, eggs, where each is made, how each cooks, and which sauces each dough wants.
Italian pasta is made from one of two doughs. The south makes pasta from durum wheat semolina and water. The north makes pasta from soft wheat flour and eggs. Almost every shape belongs to one dough or the other, and the dough sets the texture, the cook time, and the sauce.
Semolina dough is hard wheat, coarsely milled, mixed with water. It has no fat and no egg. It is stiff enough to be extruded through a die and dried, which is why every boxed shape in the supermarket is semolina. Dried semolina pasta keeps for years. It cooks in eight to fourteen minutes and it comes out firm, with a bite that holds up under a heavy ragu or in the oven.
Egg dough is soft wheat flour, often marked 00, kneaded with whole eggs and no water. The egg gives the sheet its strength and its yellow colour. The dough is rolled thin with a pin or a machine and cut into ribbons, or folded around a filling. It is eaten fresh or dried in nests. It cooks in two to four minutes and it comes out tender.
The map explains the split. Durum wheat grows in the hot, dry south, in Puglia, Sicily, and Campania, so the south dried semolina pasta in the sun. The wet, rich north of Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont had eggs, butter, and soft wheat, so it rolled sheets of egg dough on the kitchen table.
The sauce follows the dough. Semolina pasta takes tomato, oil, and the sauces of the south. Egg pasta takes butter, cream, and the meat ragus of the north. A tagliatelle alla bolognese is egg pasta with a Bolognese ragu. A spaghetti al pomodoro is semolina pasta with tomato. Swap them and both dishes suffer.
A few shapes cross the line. Lasagne sheets are egg dough in Bologna and semolina in Naples. Fettuccine are egg in Rome and often semolina in a box. This site marks the dough for every shape, and the shapes that go either way carry both.
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