A New Twist to the Pasta Bake

Baked goods and pastas are two popular food types for many American families. In most cases, baking cakes, breads, and cookies requires a different type of wheat (one that can be ground into a flour) than making pasta, which is usually made from durum wheat. However, a new USDA-ARS Soft Spring Durum wheat, being released as “USDA Morris”, represents a new variety of soft spring durum that not only grows well in harsh environments typical of durum wheat, but also features novel end-use traits that allow it to be milled conventionally, producing flour instead of the more coarse semolina.

USDA Morris features novel baking quality genes that will allow baking enthusiasts to use its yellowish flour to bake it all—bread, cookies, and pasta—while still benefiting from the same health traits associated with traditional durum, such as high protein and carotenoids. The yellow pigmentation of the soft spring durum bread makes it novel, intriguing, and appealing to bakers, consumers, and culinary enthusiasts. And it still can be used to make healthy, delicious pasta and noodles. Learn more about this new variety here.