Vitamin D Critical To Health

Most of the wheat for pasta in N. America is grown in Canada and it is durum. They bleach it to make it white. Unbleached is still durum semolina but it is called whole wheat. Same grain, different process.

Hmm the Italy pastas and American say "prince" pastas have always tasted the same to me. Maybe I have never really tried to distinguish a difference. I thought the price difference was mostly due to it being imported.

It is.

OOoooo that looks yummy! I copied it to a word processor file will have to try it out. Thanks!

All I know from buckwheat is that I like the flavor of it in my italian breads, which are part semolina to start with and then with the buckwheat get more interesting.

A friend of mine is sending me something called Kasha. That should be interesting. Any thoughts on that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasha

I've heard of it but no opinions.
Turns out that I haven't tried quinoa. I was mixing it up with amaranth, which I have tried and hated. On the other hand, that was once, a long time ago.

Hmmm let me get this straight, durum semolina is yellow where whole wheat pasta is brown, American pasta is whiter than durum semolina made from only durum? So semolina is a mix of bleached and unbleached?
The wiki article is quite cryptic for my brain.

Really? (learning..)
I use part unbleached and that is pretty white. Whole wheat (which I've more or less lifelong disliked, in, for example, whole wheat wonder bread, and the old hippy place bad hamburger buns, not that the white bread ones weren't bad too) leads to a brownish taste I've never liked. It comes in a package named whole wheat and looks... tan. On the contrary, I do like a lot of whole grain bread, go figure, and am susceptible to those with seeds or nuts in them, of whatever value.

My gallon jars of semolina flour look a little yellower than unbleached, somewhat coarser, and not tan, or at least not tan like those labelled "whole wheat".

No, semolina, at least in the packs I buy, is not bleached.
All my descriptions are relevant to what I have bought..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semolina

I will need to study these to understand the variations.

I just stared at my flour jars. The semolina is definitely yellower than the unbleached, and approaches corn meal yellow but doesn't get there.

On taste, I have been able to differentiate, but that's me. I gave up on american pastas which I found to be mush some years ago. They may have somehow changed. I do like and find a difference in some xtra expensive imported pasta - but I can't afford it, and I don't usually shop at the places that have it. Splurged recently on one from a local shop. Back with a name..

I was also told that overcooking pasta and the "enriching" fused into the wheat flour ends up in the water poured down the drain.

I haven't cooked with this yet -

18 oz of durum semolina bucatini from Maestri Pastai, traditione italiane - $3.99. Will report when I get around to trying it..

What enriching?
Anyway, don't overcook it, that's a mortal sin.

For whatever its worth, ain't no additives that I know of -
http://www.maestripastaiusa.com/aboutus.html

Durum semolina is a grain that is more glutenous than the grains used for bread flour. A few years ago their was a trade embargo placed on Canadian pasta wheat and there was a shortage and an outcry from American pasta makers because of it.
Durum wheat for pasta can be bleached or left natural. It's the process that differs not the grain.

I got that. But I like it left natural.
Also, semolina bought as semolina, is (to me) coarser and a different color than what you are saying is ordinary unbleached flour (which I take to be pretty treated, at least in the form I buy it at the grocery store, white stuff).

Oh I see, one in bleached, one is unbleached and one is the whole grain?

I'll admit I haven't tried so called whole wheat pasta. It's fear of the old beige wonderbread thing, still in a soft mushy pasta, even cooked au point. To do my part in this discussion, I'll try it. I figure those are treated with this and that as well, but may be wrong on some of them.

I tried it and it was horrible! Now they have a new multi-grain pasta too.