Spaghetti

The house cut, from wheat grown around the factory. Dried for thirty-six hours.

The Mancini family has farmed this land since 1938; the pasta came later, when Massimo Mancini, an agronomist, built a pastificio in the middle of the family's wheat rather than sell the harvest as a commodity. Farmers first, pasta makers second — their order, not ours.

The spaghetti is drawn through bronze, which leaves the surface matte and rough enough to grip a sauce, then dried for thirty-six hours at low temperature. Fast-dried pasta cooks the flavour out of the wheat before it ever meets water; this keeps it in, along with the bite.

Look at the pack: it carries the harvest year, like a vintage, because the wheat changes a little every summer.

This is the reference cut of the house — pomodoro, aglio e olio, cacio e pepe, anything built on oil or tomato. Spaghettoni is the same idea, thicker.

Meet the House: An estate in Le Marche where the pasta factory sits inside the wheat fields.

Complete your table: San Marzano DOP, Attianese — the reference sauce for the reference cut · Coratina Extra Virgin, Muraglia — aglio e olio with a spine · Spyro, Capobianco — Sunday pomodoro.