Campanelle Pasta — 12 oz (Sfoglina)
Campanelle means "little bells," and one look at the shape tells you why. A ruffled, flared cone with a hollow center, the kind of pasta that looks like it belongs on a Sunday table in a village you've only seen in photographs.
The shape isn't just pretty. The frilly edge and open middle catch sauce the way a spoon can't, so every bite arrives with something on it. Creamy sauces cling. Crumbled sausage tucks into the curves. A handful of chopped vegetables ends up exactly where it should.
Toss it with bulk Italian sausage from Rome's and a splash of cream for a dinner that feels like more than twenty minutes of work. Fold in cherry tomatoes and fresh basil from the Hub and finish it with a spoonful of Yoder ricotta. Or keep it simple with butter, black pepper, and good cheese, because a great pasta shape doesn't need much help.
Good for: creamy sausage pasta, a spring-style pasta with fresh vegetables, baked pasta, pasta salad that holds its shape, a weeknight dinner the kids will actually finish, a quick hostess-worthy dinner for two.
Meet the maker: Sfoglina, Denver
A sfoglina is the Italian word for a woman who rolls out sheets of fresh pasta by hand. It's also the name Jesse Albertini gave to the Denver pasta company she started in the summer of 2020.
She had planned a brick-and-mortar Italian shop. The pandemic changed the plan, so she started with what she could do: make pasta, dry it, and sell it online and at markets. What she kept coming back to was the grain. She set out to build her pasta around heritage and local grains, and the farmers who grow them.
The pasta is pushed through brass dies, which leaves a rough surface that grabs sauce, then dried slowly for days instead of hours. Today she makes hundreds of pounds a week in a Denver kitchen, for restaurants and home cooks.
I chose Sfoglina for the same reason I mill einkorn to order and stock CastleDough's fresh-milled Colorado wheat bread. Good food starts with the grain, and with the people who care about it.
Store in a cool, dry pantry. Salt the water generously and save a cup of the cooking water before you drain. A splash of it turns sauce silky and helps it cling to every curve.