Pasta for baking: the al forno shapes

Baking is the harshest thing you can do to pasta. It sits in the oven for half an hour, soaking up sauce and going soft, so a delicate shape turns to mush. The shapes that work al forno, in the oven, are the ones built to take it: big, thick-walled, and shaped to hold something.

Tubes you fill

The classic baked tubes are wide and sturdy. Ziti, smooth and snapped into lengths, is the American baked-ziti shape; rigatoni, ridged and wide, holds a chunky ragu through the bake. Cannelloni and manicotti are bigger still, large tubes you pipe full of ricotta or meat and lay in a dish under sauce.

Shells you stuff

Conchiglioni, the jumbo shells, cup a filling in their open cavity and hold their shape through baking, which is why stuffed shells are a shape, not just a recipe. Their ridged backs grab the sauce poured over the top.

Sheets you layer

And then the building material: lasagna sheets, layered with sauce and cheese into strata, and cannelloni rolled from the same flat dough. The sheet drinks liquid as it bakes and turns a sauce into architecture. What none of these have in common with pastina or angel hair is delicacy. In the oven, sturdy wins.