Raw pasta products are defined as the products obtained by extrusion and/or cold rolling of a mix of durum semolina with water, optionally with addition of eggs, powdered eggs, egg yolk and the like. According to regulations their moisture is brought down to 12.5% maximum in a slow-drying process, before eventual paskaging.
In order to be used, pasta products should be cooked, in boiling salted water, for about 15 minutes. The delay depends mostly on the thickness of the paste strips, and therefore of the shape (spaghetti, macaroni, noodles and the like).
Today, the consumer's demand for food requiring always less preparation time leads to a research on the means of sparing a few minutes on the cooking time of the pasta-products. Attempts have been made through a reduction of the thickness of the paste strips. This led to a not-so-good-looking cooked paste at the time of serving (bad comportment and therefore lesser appetency).
The traditional way of making paste consists in mixing semolina with 15% by weight of moisture (average contents) with a certain quantity of water, then in extruding and/or cold rolling the obtained dough and drying the paste down to the legal moisture level (maximum 12.5%) of the dry uncooked current pasta products.
It is known that precooked pasta products can be obtained by submitting the paste to a drying/cooking process at temperatures between 150.degree. C and 370.degree. C (French Pat. No. 1,437,015). The product obtained however has a strong toasted taste, too far from the neutral flavor usually looked for in pasta products.
It is also known to make expanded precooked grain basis food products by heating at 200.degree. C during extrusion durum wheat semolina or corn grits with a 15% moisture level; these expanded products however do not look or taste like traditional pasta products.
A process for making precooked pasta products is also known (French Pat. No. 1,538,067) which consists in the heating at 95.degree. C during extrusion of a dough, looking like a pancakes preparation, and made by mixing flour with a quantity of water approximately equal to the quantity existing in the final cooked product, i.e. up to twice the weight of the flour; the cooked pasta products obtained can be eaten immediately or after reheating, but have to be consumed within a short delay, these products being perishable. It is an artisan's process.