A gouache landscape of Campania, the pasta region

Pasta by region

Pasta from Campania

Campania is dried pasta's home ground. The town of Gragnano, in the hills above the Bay of Naples, laid out its main street to funnel sea air and mountain wind through racks of drying pasta, and its bronze-die durum extrusion carries a protected IGP name today. The shapes the region gave the world are mostly tubes and big hollow formats: paccheri wide enough to wear as a ring, ziti snapped by hand, calamarata cut like squid rings, plus tortiglioni, sedani, and ditali. Vermicelli, the Neapolitan word for a fat spaghetti, belongs here too. These are factory-extruded shapes engineered to dry hard and hold their bite, built for tomato, shellfish, and the long-cooked ragu napoletano that Naples keeps separate from the Bolognese.

Shape	Family	Section	Cook (min)
Caccavelle	Shaped shorts	very large bell- or bowl-shaped shell, open at the wide end, roughly 6 cm tall, for stuffing	18-20
Calamarata	Tubes	wide short ring	13
Candele	Tubes	long smooth wide hollow tube with a round section, larger in bore than ziti	9-12
Cannelloni	Sheets and broad cuts	rolled sheet or smooth pre-formed tube	4-8
Conchiglie	Shaped shorts	ridged shell with open cavity	10-13
Conchiglioni	Shaped shorts	large ridged shell with an open cavity on one side	13-16
Ditali	Tubes	short straight tube	9
Fusilli	Shaped shorts	helix, a twisted ribbon	8-11
Mafaldine	Ribbons	flat ribbon with ruffled edges on both sides	8-11
Occhi di Lupo	Tubes	large smooth short tube	10-12
Paccheri	Tubes	very wide smooth tube	12-19
Scialatielli	Ribbons	short thick fresh ribbon	4-5
Sedani	Tubes	slightly curved ridged tube	12
Tortiglioni	Tubes	tube with spiral ridges	10-13
Vermicelli	Long strands	round strand	12-14
Vesuvio	Shaped shorts	a hollow swirl that climbs from a wide ridged base to a thin peak, resembling a small volcano or a spinning top	8-10
Ziti	Tubes	smooth straight tube, sold long for hand-breaking or pre-cut	8-12

Pasta from Campania

The shapes of Campania