Cooking our pasta

The Art of the Heritage Noodle: A Lesson in Slowing Down

Over the last six years, I’ve lived and breathed pasta. I’ve experimented with an incredible array of wheat varieties, moving from simple water-based doughs to rich, silken egg finishes. Along the way, I’ve received some wonderful feedback—and, in the early days, some entirely justified bewilderment.

While home cooks have embraced our pasta and ramen with ease, professional kitchens have found it a trickier beast. To date, only one chef has successfully mastered it for a high-volume service. It turns out that bulk-cooking heritage grains requires a total rethink.

I’ve spent hours agonising over why chefs struggle to get our pasta into service, and I’ve finally boiled it down (pun intended) to a simple "ponderment."

The reality is this: Heritage pasta is low in gluten and releases its starch readily.

To master it, you have to unlearn the "set and forget" method. You must:

  • Treat it gently: Think of it as a delicate protein rather than a dry commodity.

  • Mind the heat: Keep it at a very gentle boil.

  • Tend and feel: Stir it with intention and take it off the heat while it’s still slightly firm.

  • Manage the starch: If the water becomes too thick, ladle off the starchy layer from the top and top it up with fresh, boiling salted water.

Pro tip: Don’t pour that starchy gold down the drain. Reduce it in a separate pan to create the perfect, silky base for your sauces.

A systems answer to the problem of wheat

What is the problem of wheat? The problem is that, although more money is made from wheat than any other food product in the world, that this money is made by the people trading it as a commodity on the money markets, not by the people who touch it - farmer, miller, baker and pasta maker. This has to change.

What is Fresh Flours solution to this?

  • Grow interesting, (ancient, heritage, or population) grain, at an appropriate scale.

  • Grow grain in the presence of sunshine NOT, as is the norm, in the presence of oil. (Natural not synthetic. There is NO second way)

  • Pay farmers a sustainable wage to do the job they love. So they can focus on the things they love - soil, animals….

  • Pass on to the consumer the whole goodness that the grain holds. (Fresh Flour).

  • Make the whole grain system work by using all; bran, wheatgerm (middle) and endosperm (white).

WHAT is so good about our products?

  • Our flour is made from 100% naturally grown non-synthetic grain. It’s also stone ground and as Fresh as it gets; bagged and sent for delivery within 12 hours or used that day for making pasta, crackers and Biscuits.

  • Our pasta is made with ancient and interesting grains, freshly milled, bronze cut and air dried.

  • Our biscuits and crackers are made using the same fresh flour and ancient and interesting grains, mixed with the finest of other ingredients - Kadode Kampot pepper (the worlds best pepper), Cornish Sea salt, Palm flower sugar, Greek olive oils.

  • All our products are grown organically but not necessarily certified, and Vegan.