Strozzapreti Pasta Recipe: 4 Tips for Making Strozzapreti
Written by MasterClass
Last updated: Jul 13, 2022 • 5 min read
Hailing from Emilia-Romagna, strozzapreti has a distinctive rolled shape that resembles a twisted rope. The name translates literally to “strangle priest” and refers to Italian lore in which a priest ate so much of this pasta that they choked.
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What Is Strozzapreti?
Strozzapreti is a hand-shaped pasta made with water and a mixture of all-purpose and semolina flours. The pasta is typically about three inches long and gets its distinctive shape from a twisting motion that coils the pasta dough into a rope-like form. This shape creates a small central channel and additional surface area for liquids to cling to, making strozzapreti a great pasta to serve with a wide variety of sauces.
In some regions of Italy and France, you’ll find a similarly named spinach-and-cheese dumpling called strangolapreti. While Italians sometimes interchange these names, the two “priest stranglers” couldn’t be more different.
4 Sauces to Serve With Strozzapreti
Strozzapreti pasta is a versatile shape that works with many preparations. Here are some tried-and-true pairings:
- 1. Bolognese: This rich and meaty sauce often gets served with tagliatelle, but strozzapreti’s twisted channels ensure the sauce will cling to this pasta just as well. Shower the sauce with lots of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese to finish. Learn how to make Bolognese.
- 2. Fresh tomato sauce: In-season tomatoes grated on a box grater with garlic cloves, fresh basil, and extra-virgin olive oil make for a bright and refreshing vegan pasta sauce.
- 3. Pasta alla Gricia: For a quick, pantry-friendly sauce, this dish uses just cured pork, Pecorino Romano cheese, olive oil, and black pepper. Elevate this simple pasta alla Gricia recipe with fresh strozzapreti.
- 4. Pesto Genovese: For a brightly colored and fragrant sauce, you can’t go wrong with this basil-laden classic. Add a little pasta water to your basil pesto to help it adhere to the pasta.
4 Tips for Making Strozzapreti
Here’s how to make chewy, consistent fresh pasta at home.
- 1. Weigh your ingredients. While you may have seen Italian grandmothers make pasta without any measuring tools at all, making pasta by eye takes years of practice. To get consistent hydration levels for pliable dough that’s easy to shape, weigh your ingredients with a scale.
- 2. Rest the dough. Kneading the dough creates strong gluten strands, which give pasta that classic chewy texture. Directly after kneading, these strands will be springy and firm, making the dough challenging to shape. Resting the dough is a critical step in relaxing those gluten strands so you can twist it into that quintessential strozzapreti shape.
- 3. Keep the dough hydrated. Pasta dough tends to dry on the outside and form a skin, making it difficult to shape and giving it an uneven consistency. While you’re shaping smaller portions of dough, always keep the bulk portion of the dough covered with plastic wrap.
- 4. Salt the cooking water generously. You’ll notice there’s no salt in most hand-shaped pasta recipes. The seasoning happens during the cooking process, which is why you should season both your pasta water and pasta sauce with salt, herbs, and spices. The pasta water should taste like the sea; two tablespoons of kosher salt for every gallon of water is a standard ratio.
Traditional Italian Strozzapreti Recipe
makes
prep time
1 hrtotal time
1 hr 4 mincook time
4 minIngredients
Note: The total time does not include 20 minutes of inactive time.
- 1
In a small bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour and semolina flour until evenly combined.
- 2
Pour the flour mixture onto a clean work surface, then use the rounded bottom of the bowl to press a well into the center of the flour mound.
- 3
Pour the water into the well.
- 4
Using a fork, begin mixing the flour into the water, taking care not to break the walls of the well.
- 5
When the mixture is too thick to mix with the fork and is no longer liquid, switch to a bench scraper and begin folding the flour into the dough, chopping and folding until you have incorporated the flour and the dough is a shaggy mass.
- 6
Knead the dough by folding it over itself, pressing away from yourself with the heel of your hand, then rotating it a quarter turn.
- 7
Repeat this motion continuously to knead the dough for about 5 minutes.
- 8
If the dough seems too dry, wet your hands lightly with water and continue kneading.
- 9
Continue to knead the dough until it feels springy to the touch, another 5 minutes or so.
- 10
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest for 20 minutes.
- 11
Clean your work surface and hands before lightly dusting the surface with flour.
- 12
Prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper and a dusting of semolina flour and set them aside.
- 13
Unwrap the dough, cut it in half, and rewrap one half in the plastic wrap.
- 14
Using a rolling pin, roll the unwrapped dough into a rough rectangle that’s a bit less than ¼-inch thick.
- 15
Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife, slice the rolled dough into 1-inch wide strips.
- 16
Keeping the remaining strips covered lightly with plastic, slice one strip into 3-inch long pieces.
- 17
Use one hand to pinch the end of a dough piece onto the work surface. Gently pull the other end upwards, twist the dough into a tight spiral, and pinch the end. Transfer the shaped dough to the lined sheet pan. (You should end up with a coiled dough strip that’s about 2½ inches long. It will uncoil slightly when you transfer it to the sheet tray.) Give each piece of pasta space on the sheet tray, taking care not to overlap them to prevent sticking.
- 18
Continue shaping until you have portioned and twisted all of the dough.
- 19
To store the pasta for later use, freeze it on the baking tray, then transfer the frozen pasta to a freezer bag and keep it frozen until you’re ready to use. You can cook the pasta directly from the freezer, adding 1–2 minutes to the total cook time.
- 20
To cook the fresh pasta, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook until it rises to the top and is just al dente, about 3–4 minutes, taking care not to overcook. Drain the pasta and serve it tossed with your favorite sauce.
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