Hello to everyone
I need your help. I have a fresh pasta shop. I dry the fusilli on the tray for 2 days. there is no breakage. But my place is too small. I want to dry more.
Can I dry with commercial dehydrator? Does it break before or after cooking? Have any of you tried?
The machine does not write pasta in the descriptions.
for example this machine
[https://www.ebay.com/itm/334561198802](https://www.ebay.com/itm/334561198802)
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by Jazzlike-Ad-235
3 Comments
I use a commercial dehydrator all the time. If the pasta is thin, or if the hydration is just a little bit under, the pasta can break, and mine usually breaks if someone takes a tray out of the machine and isn’t gentle enough. It really depends on the shapes you’re doing. If you’re doing fusilli, you should be fine – just leave the really thin ones like angel hair to the professionals with drying rooms that are the size of your house. If you use something like a rigatoni die, I find it helps to stand the pasta upright so it doesn’t flatten out during the process.
The one I use is almost exactly like the one you linked on eBay, maybe smaller – but the technology hasn’t changed on these things for like a hundred years, although the quality of the fans has certainly improved. My only comment is that the one I use has plastic trays that are flat/perforated, which tend to be easier to remove food from – yours looks to have a metal screen instead, not sure if that would be an issue, probably not. Maybe spray them with baking spray or rub a paper towel on them that has a few drops of olive oil.
You can use this for pretty much any open shape with decent results. Any enclosed shapes will most certainly break. The pasta will contract as it dries and for enclosed shapes like penne and rigatoni this will create tension which will in most cases end up cracking. Fusilli, like u/ranting_chef said should be fine as it can contract without the structural tension. It can still be prone to breaking during shipping with this drying method.
In a commercial pasta dryer, you will run through different drying phases with variable temperature and humidity levels. One phase is run at high temperature. This will give the pasta a shell-like surface through Maillard reaction which in turn strengthens the pasta and prevents it from breaking. It also give the pasta more bite when cooked.
You can read more about temperature phases here
You can get commercial pasta dryers the size (ish) of a regular double fridge, [like this one](https://www.lineapasta.com/en/heat-treatments/pasta-dryers/pasta-dryer-ec-24-2)
Pasta dryers and dehydrators don’t work the same. If you read up on static drying you’re creating a warm humid environment slowly that will dissipate and turn into warmer, drier air that will dry the pasta from the inside out verses a dehydrator that dries from the outside causing pasta to get brittle because the surface dries too quickly. If you want to dry a larger amount, Arcobaleno sells a 100 pound dryer that works very well.