It’s estimated that around 30% of Americans are on a gluten-free diet, which is pretty significant! If you’re on a gluten-free diet or simply trying to cut back on the amount of gluten you eat, it can be helpful to know which pastas have the most gluten!
Regular pasta (all types of pasta made with “regular” durum wheat flour, such as spaghetti, macaroni, penne, etc), whole wheat pasta, and couscous are among the highest-gluten pastas.
We’ll explain gluten’s role in making pasta and explain more about these high-gluten pastas next!
Gluten & pasta
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley. Gluten helps provide elasticity and chewiness in baked goods like bread, and it’s also important in making pasta.
The type of flour typically used to make pasta is durum wheat, a type of wheat referred to as being “hard”. “Hard” means it’s higher in protein and gluten, and it’s ideal for providing a chewy texture in pasta.
What happens if you use lower-gluten flour to make pasta? It wouldn’t be as chewy, and it might be a bit mushy and not hold its shape as well.
Gluten-free pastas are available and are preferred among people on special diets, with gluten intolerance, or wheat allergies. Which types of pasta have the most gluten, though? Let’s find out!
High-gluten pastas
Regular pasta
Regular pasta refers to non-whole-wheat durum wheat semolina, a type of flour popular for pasta making.
Most types of pasta are made from durum wheat semolina, which is higher in gluten than other types of flour like all-purpose, 00, cake flour, and pastry flour.
Regular pasta comes in all sorts of shapes (spaghetti, ravioli, macaroni…the list goes on and on!), but they are basically the same except for their shape.
Some types of pasta have eggs added, so those can be slightly lower in overall gluten because the flour is displaced by the addition of eggs. However, these types of pasta aren’t low in gluten by any means and aren’t suitable for a gluten-free diet.
Whole wheat pasta
Whole wheat pasta is made from durum wheat, but it’s a bit different than the kind used to make regular pasta. Whole wheat pasta uses flour that uses the entire part of the wheat kernel: the bran, germ, and endosperm.
(In regular pasta, the flour is refined to remove the germ and bran, leaving only the starchy endosperm.)
Whole wheat pasta is naturally richer in nutrients than refined pasta and it’s also much higher in fiber. Refined flour is enriched with vitamins and minerals that are lost with the removal of the germ and bran, which is why refined flour is also called “enriched flour”.
Whole wheat pasta has a similar amount of gluten in it as regular pasta.
Couscous
Couscous is often thought of as a grain and not pasta – but it’s a type of pasta! Couscous is made of tiny steamed balls of semolina flour, the same high-gluten flour used to make pasta.
To make couscous, semolina is moistened and tossed with finer ground wheat flour until small pieces of dough form. These small dough pieces are dried and are then quickly steamed. (If you buy couscous in stores, it might be labeled as “quick cooking” or “instant”, which means it’s been partially steamed to shorten the cooking time!)
That means that couscous is a high-gluten pasta just like regular and whole wheat pasta!
FAQs:
Pasta and bread are both made with higher-protein flours, which indicates a higher gluten content. The gluten content varies among the types of bread and pasta, but both are considered to be high in gluten.
Gluten-free pastas like those made from corn and rice flour, edamame pasta, lentil pasta, shirataki noodles, and cassava pasta are among several options if you have a gluten intolerance.
Whole wheat pasta is made from whole wheat high-gluten flour, so it’s high in gluten like regular pasta.
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