Region: Campania
The Pastificio Gentile, founded in 1876, is one of the historic artisan factories that made the city of Gragnano famous all over the world for its pasta. Gentile still maintains, in the era of advanced technologies, artisanal production methods, attention to every single detail, from the selection of raw materials and to the control of the phases related to production.
The context in which the pasta factory was born is that of a small town dedicated to the production of pasta since the sixteenth century, an era in which each family was somehow involved in this activity. Walking through the streets of the city today you can still see how the architects, who designed neighborhoods and buildings in the nineteenth century, conceived everything to facilitate the production phases, in particular of the drying that was done on the street in the light of the Campania sun , enjoying the breeze that came from the Gulf of Naples.
All the formats produced are bronze-drawn, among these you can find the great classics of tradition, such as paccheri or fusilli and new original formats. It was precisely the desire to experiment that allowed one of the company's most famous formats to be born: SpaghettOne, a spaghetti with a diameter of 2.7mm.
The pride of the production has always been the Fusillo, completely handmade. From a simple noodle the "fusillare", with a knitting needle, roll under the forearm noodle after noodle, giving it a helical shape, embellished by the diversity of each individual fusillo.
Exiccation
The "Cirillo Method" is a drying process conceived by the homonymous engineer from Torre Annunziata. It is based on the possibility of recreating the same phenomenon of natural drying inside the pasta factories, which exploited the heat of the sun and the force of the wind.
In Gragnano there is still what was once known as the "macaroni road", it is the current Via Roma where the pasta was spread out in the sun and we waited patiently for the days to pass until the drying process was complete.
Observing this process, Cyril designed cells inside which braziers (now replaced by large heaters) heated the air and powerful fans distributed the heat emission.
Today this method allows you to dry the pasta slowly, in three or four days, and it is essential to obtain the consistency that fans of artisanal pasta love so much.
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