Malloreddus and Gnocchetti Sardi Pasta Paddle

Simple wood tool for making Malloreddus pasta made in Italy.

This tool creates the famous Gnocchetti Sardi, the most typical kind of pasta of Sardinia, which is a shell-shaped fringed pasta of 2 cm in length or more, made of semolina flour and water.

Malloreddus have always been the most prepared traditional dish in Sardinia in all the most important occasions, both in festivals and village fairs, and during weddings. Since ancient times housewives have prepared this type of pasta. The origin is to be found in the millenary scheme of the peasant cultivation-alimentation in the Mediterranean area, mainly based on wheat cultivation.

The manual processing of malloreddus in home was done by mixing durum wheat semolina with water and rolling up strips of pasta about 15 cm (5.9 in) long, which were cut into cubes. Then the shape was obtained by pressing the cubes of dough against the end of a straw basket, called su ciuliri (the sieve) to get them striped or smooth it was enough to press them against a wooden base simply. The result was a pot-bellied product that, in the imagination of the agro-pastoral world, took the form of small calves.

Made in Italy.