HISTORY: THE ORIGINS AND SPREAD OF PASTA

The Etruscans, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Arabs... these (and others) are the people to whom the paternity of the pasta is attributed.

It is very likely that many ancient peoples discovered a simple and effective way to preserve wheat over long periods of time, independently from each other, by mixing the flour with water, forming various shapes and then dehydrating the material.

It is thought that the word "pasta" is derived from Greek origins (meaning "flour mixed with water"), but it is certain that the Arabs used this technique to conserve wheat flour in their travels across deserts.
Descriptions of a food, very similar to pasta, were recorded by the poet Horace in the first century before Christ. However, already before that (the third century before Christ), this food is spoken of in Greek literature, and, even before that, Etruscan funerary portraits show tools used in pasta making.
More of a legend than history is the Chinese origin, supported by the account of Marco Polo, but which is insubstantial when referring to the dried material that we know as “pasta”.

Nonetheless, pasta is an Italian product in that is it synonymous with Italy and is the national dish of its citizens. The spread of pasta abroad started in the 1700s and 1800s.

In that period, pasta was already fairly well-known and appreciated in England and, in the Encyclopedia of Diderot and D’Alembert, it is possible to find a description of a press for the production of long pasta.
Goethe, in his "Journey in Italy" describes the remarkable spread of "macaroni". The spread to America, however, occurred later and was linked to the Italian immigration.

The 1800s and the Industrial Revolution marked the introduction of the progressive mechanization in pasta production. Increasingly more advanced mixing machines and presses became widespread in “pasta factories”.

The stamps in bronze, then as now, are still manufactured in the mechanical workshops of Pistoia.

At the end of the nineteenth century, various workshops started to prosper, one of which was the Artisan Pasta Factory of Giovanni Fabbri in Strada in Chianti...