Pasta Shapes

Making Pasta Dough by Hand

Rolling Fresh Pasta by Hand

How to make Stuffed Pasta

Dumpling Wrappers Recipe

Pasta Recipes - click here

Food Articles - click here

Pasta Shapes

Radiatori

Rotini

Ruote

Stelline

Gemelli

Linguine

Manicotti

Orzo

Cavatelli

Conchiglie

Creste di gallo

Farfalle

For flat noodles, here’s the basic range:

• capellini (the thinnest, around ⅛ inch wide)

• linguine (about ¼ inch wide)

• fettuccine (about ⅜ inch wide)

• tagliatelle (about ½ inch wide)

• pappardelle (over ⅝ inch wide, even up to 1 inch)

Tubular noodles are mostly available as dried pasta-unless you have an electric pasta extruder or live near a high-end supermarket that offers fresh pasta in the refrigerator case.

They also come in a thin-to-thick continuum: from capelli d’angelo (angel hair) to spaghettini to the familiar spaghetti, and then on up through various hollow tubes like bucatini and perciatelli. In general, thinner noodles are better for fresh tomato sauces and other simple sauces.

The chunkier the sauce, the wider the noodle - although we’re partial to a butter sauce on wide Pappardelle. Finally, there are shaped pastas: ziti (hollow tubes), penne (larger hollow tubes), rigatoni (ribbed hollow tubes), rigate (larger ribbed hollow tubes), rotelle (spirals or wagon wheels, depending on the manufacturer), farfalle (bow ties), and the like.

There are ways to make some of them at home. For example, for curly fusilli, snip fettuccine noodles into 6-inch lengths, twist them into corkscrews, and let them dry on a clean kitchen towel. But going to all this trouble isn’t terribly practical, given the range available at the supermarket. By and large, we save shaped pastas for baked dishes and salads.