Pici

Pici, called pinci around Montalcino, are a thick spaghetti-like pasta from Tuscany made of flour and water. Rolled by hand they come out rough and irregular; made by machine they are straighter and never less than 3 mm across. The Tuscany Region lists them among its traditional products and estimates production at about 400 tonnes a year. ¹

What goes into the dough. The traditional ingredients are flour, water and salt, with extra virgin olive oil in fresh pici; one egg per kilogram of flour may be added for a firmer bite. ¹ In the province of Siena the recipe always uses soft wheat flour, not semolina. Machine-made fresh pici may use either soft wheat flour or durum semolina with water only, while dried pici may be made only from durum semolina. ¹

Rolling by hand. The dough is kneaded with oil, flattened a little and given more oil, then cut into irregular cylindrical strips that are stretched by hand on a wooden board. ¹ Finished pici are dusted with durum semolina or maize flour so they do not stick, laid on a cloth, dusted again and cooked in boiling water for about 5 minutes. ¹

Pici from the factory. Machines extrude them through bronze or other dies; for fresh pici the strands are then pasteurised with flowing steam, dried to remove the steam's moisture and cooled. ¹ Packed this way, sometimes in a protective atmosphere, fresh pici can keep for up to 45 days. ¹ Italian law requires packaged fresh pasta to keep at least 24% moisture and to be stored at no more than 4 °C. ³

Pici a parabola. Montopoli Valdarno has made its own pici since 1860: flour and water only, kneaded slowly, drawn through bronze moulds and laid by hand on frames in an open parabola so the strands do not touch. ¹ The shape helps them dry at no more than 55 °C for about 72 hours, down to less than 7% moisture, well below the 12.5% that Italian law allows for dried pasta. ¹³

How they are served. Pici are a first course with meat or vegetable sauces: ragù, tomato, garlic or aglione, oil and chilli, or duck sauce, and pici cacio e pepe are famous too. ¹ The Venice cooking school Accademia di Cucina Italiana notes that pici are made with ordinary flour and water, unlike the semolina and whole wheat dough of Venetian bigoli. ²

A peasant pasta. The Tuscan card calls pici an ancient pasta and links them to the skein of strands painted in the Tomb of the Leopards at Tarquinia, an Etruscan tomb. ¹ Once they were made only from flour and water, a typical poor farmers' dish; eggs came later. Today many pasta makers across Tuscany produce fresh and dried, folded or straight pici for local, national and foreign markets. ¹

Pici or spaghetti. Spaghetti sold in Italy as durum wheat semolina pasta are made only of semolina and water and dried to at most 12.5% moisture. ³ Pici, by contrast, are mostly fresh, usually from soft wheat flour with oil, and either hand-stretched and uneven or machine-made at 3 mm or more across. ¹ So pici are thicker, softer in dough and quicker to cook when fresh, about 5 minutes. ¹

Why it matters to you. Fresh pici need the fridge: packaged fresh pasta must stay at 4 °C or below, and factory pici keep for up to 45 days. ³¹ Generic fresh pasta gives 288 kcal per 100 g raw and 131 kcal cooked. ⁴ Wheat, and egg if the recipe adds it, are allergens that must be highlighted on the label. ⁵¹