Martelli

Martelli is a small family pasta maker in the old hill town of Lari, in the province of Pisa, Tuscany. It works from a large yellow building near the castle, and its eight workers all belong to the Martelli family.

At the end of the 19th century a small pasta workshop in Lari was run by the Catelani couple. Among its workers were the brothers Guido and Gastone Martelli, and in 1926 the childless owners passed the business on to them. After a 1967 law required pasta to be made only from durum wheat and sold in sealed packs, many small makers closed, but Mario and Dino Martelli stayed artisanal and chose quality over volume. The well-known yellow pack appeared in the 1980s. In 2016, for the firm's 90th anniversary, the street where it stands was renamed Via dei Pastifici.

The pasta is made from Italian durum wheat semolina milled by the Borgioli mill in Calenzano. The semolina is kneaded slowly with cold water, extruded through round bronze dies and dried in wooden cells below 36 °C; spaghetti take about 50 hours to dry. Packs are filled by hand.

The range is a single line, Martelli Pasta di Semola, with five shapes: spaghetti, spaghettini, Maccheroni di Toscana, smooth Penne classiche (the firm makes no ridged penne) and seven-spiral Fusilli di Pisa. It is dry durum wheat pasta sold through specialist food shops rather than large supermarket chains.