#gastronomy

In the year 1700, an artisan called Isidre Sanmartí started his pasta shop in the town of Caldes de Montbui (Barcelona Metropolitan Ambit, Catalonia). He made pasta as was habitual at the time: he had a mill that he used to turn wheat into semolina, and he added the local water (Caldes town is known since Roman times for its termal waters) to make it into pasta. Isidre also invented some wooden tools to make spaghetti more easily. Since then, his descendants have never abandoned the shop.

Fideus Sanmartí still has their shop in the town, and they still use the same recipe as they did more than 300 years ago: only wheat and Caldes's springwater (unlike most pasta producers nowadays, who use egg and flour). The result is a pasta that makes the soups and stews thicken thanks to the starch that the pasta releases when it's being cooked, and it also makes the pasta last for hours without getting too soft after cooking.

In the 1900s, the shop added the new machinery. They bought a machine that cuts the pasta, which still works perfectly now more than 100 years later and is still the one they use. Other machines, such as the kneading tool, were bought in the 1940s.

The drying process is still done in the traditional way, leaving the pasta hanging for 48 hours (compared to the big pasta companies, which leave their pasta less than 10 hours to dry).

Every day, they produce 1,000 kg of pasta, comprising 52 different types of pasta, though most of it is noodles (like Isidre did back in the 1700s). Most of their pasta is sold in Catalonia, but nowadays almost 15% of their produce is exported to 16 other countries, where it is mostly used in gourmet restaurants who value the high quality of this pasta.

Pasta soups and other noodle dishes are very common in Catalan cuisine, having been among the most common foods in Catalonia for centuries. However, nowadays there are not many artisans left who make pasta, since most of it comes from factories.

Pizza Capri (Hyde Park, Chicago, IL)