Advances in Pasta Technology

Pasta is a conventional Italian product made from durum wheat semolina and characterized by high protein content, firm shape and texture. Extrusion technology allows incorporation of a variety of ingredients to pasta such as legumes, millets, pseudo cereals and others including mushrooms, tubers and pigmented components to enrich conventional pasta. It is a convenient, popular and versatile product, offering the food industry and researchers the opportunity to offer high nutritional quality by using alternative ingredients of nutritive excellence with a high concentration of bioactive components which induce several health benefits through antioxidative pathways. To deal with compromised functional properties of resultant pasta, different techno-functional interventions including use of hydrocolloids and modification of flours which are used to improve rheological and textural profile are necessary.