Pasta

Pasta is a food made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, formed into sheets or other shapes and cooked by boiling or baking. It is a staple of Italian cuisine, and food historians believe it reached Italy through Sicily during the Middle Ages by way of Mediterranean trade networks, rather than through the popular but unsupported legend that Marco Polo brought it from China. Documented references to pasta across the Italian peninsula become frequent from the 13th and 14th centuries onward. Today more than 310 distinct pasta shapes are known under over 1,300 documented names, with the same shape often carrying different names depending on the region, and modern variations include gluten-free versions made from rice flour, beans, or lentils alongside the traditional durum-wheat dough.