Collection: Pastificio Minardo
In the late 1990s an electronics engineer from Modica found out that one of the durum wheats most used for Italian pasta since 1975 had been bred with gamma rays. Giorgio Minardo went the other way: back to the tall old wheats of Sicily, Russello and Timilia, grown without pesticides on more than 247 acres (100 hectares) of the island and kept separate from field to mill. Since 2007 his workshop in Modica has turned them into bronze-cut pasta dried for up to 72 hours. In the US it carries the name Maestri Pastai di Sicilia.
Sicily
Some people start a company because they see a market. Giorgio Minardo started one because he kept asking what good food really is. He had a degree in electronic engineering and a job in Turin when he came home to Modica, in the deep south-east of Sicily, opened a natural food shop that is still open today, and began to study where his town's food came from.
The question led him to wheat. Since 1975 one of the durum varieties most widely used for Italian pasta had been bred with gamma rays to yield more. Giorgio went looking for what came before: the local wheats that had fed Sicily for centuries. Working with the wheat research station of Caltagirone, he helped multiply old Sicilian varieties such as Russello and Timilia. They grow up to 6 feet (180 cm) tall, shade out weeds on their own, resist drought, and need no chemicals. They also yield less, and in the 1990s almost nobody wanted them.
So he rebuilt the chain one field at a time. Today more than 247 acres (100 hectares) of growers in the provinces of Ragusa, Siracusa and Enna and in the Madonie mountains farm for him under shared contracts, splitting costs, risks and results so the farmer is paid fairly whatever the market does. Every variety is stored and milled separately to keep its character, and the semolina reaches 11.5 to 15 percent protein, well above the legal minimum for pasta.
In 2007 he opened his own pasta workshop in Modica. The dough is kneaded at room temperature with mineral water, pushed through bronze dies and dried slowly at low temperature for 24 to 72 hours, depending on the shape. Alongside the classic Sicilian shapes come busiate with pistachio, with cocoa and black garlic, or with hemp, and the flours themselves: Russello and Perciasacchi semolina and whole-grain Timilia, for bread and fresh pasta at home. In the United States the pasta carries the name Maestri Pastai di Sicilia.
The company motto says it plainly: Biodiversity is not a luxury. It is the best insurance we can leave to the future. For Terra Sacra, Pastificio Minardo is what happens when an engineer takes tradition seriously: two old grains, one island, and all the time each shape needs.