# What kind of wheat berries for homemade pasta?



## Bellyman (Jul 6, 2013)

Just got a new toy... a pasta maker. It's one of the little hand cranked thingies that you clamp to the countertop and crank your dough through to make a sheet and then has another "head" on it to cut the pasta sheet into spaghetti or linguini or something similar. I've wanted one for years and now finally get to try one out. It wasn't expensive.

But... I don't generally buy flour. I buy wheat berries and grind my own flour as I need it. Right now, I have hard red, hard white and soft white berries at my disposal. I do not have any durham wheat berries, and I'm not entirely sure that would be the right choice for fresh made pasta anyway. (?)

I've been poking around Google for the last half hour and really haven't found anyone saying that they use a particular kind of wheat berries to grind for their fresh pasta. One did kinda of 'hint' at using hard white wheat, and that sounds like a reasonable choice. (Durham is a hard wheat.) I've also seen a number of references to "all purpose" flour, too, but since I grind my wheat, I'm not really sure just what "all purpose" means. (I suspect it's probably a blend.) 

America's Test Kitchen suggested that bread flour was not a good choice but I know a lot of store bought bread flours tend to be either heavy on or all hard red wheat. I don't really like that even for bread. (I prefer a blend of hard red and hard white for my bread. Hard red gives a nice rich flavor but is quite dense while hard white has less flavor but a much lighter texture.)

So... does anyone here grind their own wheat berries for fresh pasta? If so, what kind of wheat do you prefer? I could just have at it one day with a few different trials but thought maybe I'd see if someone has already been around this block. Might save me (and other future pasta makers) a good bit of time and aggravation. 

Thanks!


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## farmerDale (Jan 8, 2011)

We make home made pasta using our eggs and flour from our hard red spring wheat, salt, and water. Durum is used to make semolina, which makes a very nice yellow pasta of course, but is not needed for home pasta making. MIL makes hers using regular "bread flour" which is usually a blend of a couple or more classes of wheat, which makes me feel that the type of wheat is not terribly important for home made pasta.


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## Bellyman (Jul 6, 2013)

Thanks, Dale! Good to know. I almost always have some extra flour on hand from making bread so maybe I'll have a go at using some of that for a small trial. It's 2 parts hard red and 4 parts hard white wheat. 

I appreciate the input!


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