2 replies to this topic

[Jonathan Day]

John, in Pot on the Fire you give a recipe for a yeast-raised biscuit (cookie), the Arnhemse Meisjes.

Thinking on this, I started to wonder whether pasta could be made out of yeast-raised dough. Might it have more flavour, more "character" than ordinary egg pasta? Yeast-raised doughs can certainly be rolled very thin, and it should be possible to give them enough body to survive cooking in boiling water.

Are there yeast-raised pastas in any culinary tradition that you are aware of?

[Varmint]

On a similar note, friends of ours made some homemade pasta that was partially (and mistakenly) made with self-rising flour, a common pantry item here in the south. Needless to say, it was not what was intended.

[John Thorne]

Sounds like you're trying to reinvent gnocchi by other means. Or, to take a cue from Varmint, dumplings. Many Southern recipes for dumplings are essentially Southern biscuits cooked by simmering rather than baking. The advantage there is that the double-acting baking powder will make them "rise" ("swell" is probably a more appropriate word) in the cooking liquid whereas the heat would kill the yeast. This would mean letting the yeast-leavened "pasta" dough rise and then trying to get it into the water without deflating it -- a tricky business. And the result? Certainly not al dente. Imagine boiled bread sticks. The bottom line here, though, is that for this question you want Shirley Corriher, not me.