Perfect Pasta

Getting pasta 'just right' takes patience and practice.

It helps to start with the best possible ingredients. White, tasteless, bleached-to-death pasta, a horrible holdover from the days of Wonder Bread and the 'faux-wood-and-gold' style, is no longer the only option: many companies are now offering whole-wheat and multigrain pastas that offer superior taste and nutrition.

White, Wheat, and 7-Grain pastas. Data from NutritionData.com and Ronzoni Healthy Harvest

While all products made from wheat flour will have the same glycemic index, whole grains include the bran component, which contains additional dietary fiber and B-vitamins.

Strangely, whole grain products tend to be more expensive than their bran-removed, bleached counterparts... I would think that whole grain products would involve fewer processing steps and therefore end up cheaper. It may be related to economies of scale - the typical American still prefers the bleached, tasteless stuff for a few cents cheaper per pound.