Darin sits down with Thomas McNaughton and Ryan Pollnow, the pasta-obsessed legends behind San Francisco’s Flour + Water Hospitality Group. They share their five rules for cooking pasta like a pro, including why your water needs way more salt than you think, why bronze dies matter, and how not to mess up fresh noodles (spoiler: it includes drying them a little). It’s part masterclass, part love letter to carbs, and all delicious. If your pantry has a box of pasta in it (and let’s be honest, it does), this one’s for you.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Darin, Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, we chat with our old friends, Thomas McNaughton and Ryan Pollnow, co-chefs of the Flour and Water Hospitality Group up in San Francisco, which includes the legendary Flour& Water, the incredible Penny Roma and the recently opened Flour And Water Pizzeria. We chat about their undying love for pasta. The amazing amount of shapes that they make in their restaurants and they share their tips on how to cook pasta perfectly at home every single time. Let’s get into the rules. Thomas and Ryan, so great to be sitting down again with you guys and congratulations on the Flower and Water Pizza Shop for nothing but great things and yet another reason why I got to get up north to check it out and see it and see you guys.

[00:00:55] Thomas Yeah, appreciate you having us again.

[00:00:57] Darin You know, I first met you guys back in 2012 through the Noisette Food and Music Festival that we put on, had you guys be part of. And when I first met you, it was really all about the pasta. Can you talk to me about how pasta has really been a guiding force and North Star for you guys throughout your cooking career?

[00:01:14] Thomas You know, when we opened Flower and Water in 2009, and it was really cemented very early on at the heart of the menu was our pasta program. About nine months in, we opened a dough room to handle volume, and it’s just kind of been a roller coaster ever since.

[00:01:29] Darin Now, is it true that you make a hundred unique pasta shapes?

[00:01:34] Ryan We’ve exaggerated that a touch. We’re almost at a hundred, which every year we’re adding to the repertoire. The moment you start diving into the history of pasta and regionality, it’s just the type of thing that really intrigues Tom and I as.

[00:01:48] Thomas The educational side of cooking. The humble nature of Ryan will always come out. I think that our manual’s at like 92, 94 right now.

[00:01:55] Darin Okay. All right. I mean, that’s a rounding error.

[00:01:58] Thomas Damn near. Let’s call it damn near. Yeah. Yeah, it’s called damn near a hundred. You said a hundred, he made it sound like 40. It’s about 92.

[00:02:05] Darin Yeah, yeah, let’s call it 92 with plus or minus of 8, and that gets us to 100.

[00:02:11] Thomas And there’s a trust in diners, you know, there’s so many of these odd shapes that people can’t even pronounce. Yes. But once you put it into that pasta category, put it within that box, there’s trust that’s already established to give it a try.

[00:02:24] Darin There’s something about being a diner at a restaurant that makes pasta and eating the way it’s prepared in a restaurant that somehow differs from the way that I cook it at home. It’s somehow intimidating. Why do you think people don’t always cook pasta as well as you can at a restaurants?

[00:02:40] Thomas Part of the reason why we’re here today is to really talk about simple tricks and tips to be able to do that. And when you separate into dried and fresh pasta, we always say when you learn these little tricks and you just practice and practice, it makes amazing meal.

[00:02:56] Darin Let’s get into five rules for cooking pasta perfectly.

[00:03:01] Ryan Rules one through three, they’re all related. And growing up, I experienced the exact opposite of these things. No offense to my parents, I love them. They’re lovely people. They hopefully are gonna tune into this to learn something. Seasoning your pasta water and using the correct amount is really important, especially extruded pastas. It’s just flour and water that have been pressed through bronze dyes. There’s no salt inside the noodle itself. So making sure that your pasta water is heavily seasoned. For us, it’s a quarter cup of salt for every four quarts of water, which seems really high. But when you’re blanching anything or cooking pasta, it’s important that you’re introducing salt in that early stage. So seasoning your pasta waters, super important.

[00:03:41] Darin How does rule?

[00:03:41] Thomas To tie into rule one. So one of the most important parts when you cook at home, when you’re boiling that heavily seasoned water and you add your pasta to it and you start to cook, you always want to reserve a small amount of that starchy pasta water. That starchy water plays such an integral role at our restaurant in both loosening sauces when they become too tight. But also stabilizing them. So we do a lot of like Northern Italian butter emulsions that starts you water is so important to help stabilize it. And so never strain your pasta water into the sink and allow the entire thing to go down the drain. You always wanna reserve a little bit to cook in the sauce itself.

[00:04:25] Darin Now, just as a side tip, maybe I’m nervous about using glass or something that might shatter when I put boiling hot water into it. What would you recommend as a vessel? The easiest way.

[00:04:35] Thomas Is just to ladle.

[00:04:37] Darin Mm-hmm.

[00:04:37] Thomas Some out as soon as you’re ready to strain. Just ladle a little bit out, you can reserve it in any vessel, whether it’s a mason jar. Pyrex. Whatever you have. Definitely don’t recommend sticking in a glass drinking cup. You’re always gonna end up with crunchy pasta.

[00:04:52] Darin Rule number three is something I used to do the reverse of. And it wasn’t until a few years ago that I learned this tip and this rule that it did take my pasta to a different game. What’s rule three?

[00:05:03] Ryan Most people are right there with you and they forget about the important marriage of noodle and sauce. So rule three is always finishing your pasta in the pan sauce itself. Last minute of cooking that happens in the pansauce is gonna allow for the noodles to adhere to the sauce or the sauce to adhere the noodles. And it’s important that they have time together.

[00:05:24] Darin We’re cooking pasta. I know there’s always a difference between cooking dry pasta and fresh pasta. What’s rule number four about cooking fresh pasta?

[00:05:31] Thomas Every fresh noodle has to go through a certain dehydration process. And that can be very, very brief. And we’ll give a really easy example of popper deli noodle. We want that noodle to behave like leather when it’s ready to cook. And that means it’s completely pliable, it won’t crack, it won’ break, it’s not brittle. When you have too fresh of a noodle and you go to cook it, the moisture content of that noodle will allow it to warp, so it’ll pull, it’ll have thin parts. When you’re rolling out your pasta and you have a long sheet of pasta or pappardelle, if you wanna cut it into eight inch lengths, you take the first initial eight inch length and you just dust it with semolina. You can let it sit on a cutting board for five minutes. And then you roll those noodles up and you can cut them into one-inch sections for a really wide papardelli. That’s so integral to how the noodle cooks.

[00:06:27] Darin For those who are not always gonna have a chance to get fresh pasta, even though if you can make it a home or buy it, it’s always a treat. What’s the final and fifth rule when it comes to cooking dried pasta?

[00:06:36] Ryan The most readily available for anyone at any market grocery store is the Southern Italian style, which is an extruded dried pasta. There’s one very, very important thing to look out for when you’re purchasing a dried extruded pasta, and that is that it goes through bronze dyes. So bronze is a very porous material. As the pasta dough passes through that dye, it’s leaving an imprint of texture. And for us, texture is everything when it comes to good pasta. And that was one of the leading characteristics that made us want to get into the consumer packaged goods. To the retail world was introducing something that we do in our dough room every single day, extruding pasta through bronze dyes and going through a slow dry that landed us in market.

[00:07:17] Darin I can’t thank you guys enough for sending some of those package dry pastas to refill our pantry. It really meant a lot to my family and I. Of course. If people don’t want to cook pasta perfectly at home now that they have your rules, where can they go to get your pasta and have you make it for them?

[00:07:34] Thomas Based in Bay Area, we’re now in 350 grocery stores. And you can also go online to Flower and Water Foods and you can buy it direct from us.

[00:07:44] Ryan And if you want us to do all of the work, you can come to our restaurants in San Francisco. Our two pasta-centric restaurants are both in the Mission District. Flower and Water, which opened up 16 years ago, is on Harrison and 20th. And then a short one block walk away from that, we have Penny Roma. And Penny Roma does a little bit more of classic Italian pastas, where Flower and Waters are a little bit more experimental. But seven nights a week, we are cooking fresh and extruded pastas at both those restaurants.

[00:08:10] Darin It’s as perfect as pasta is going to get. Thomas and Ryan, congratulations on everything. Congratulations on the pizza shop, the restaurants, all of your future endeavors. I can’t wait to get back up North to have food and a meal with you guys really soon.

[00:08:24] Thomas Darin, so appreciate the conversation.

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