Can I Use Semola Flour For The Fresh Tagliatelle?

Our answer

Nigella's recipe for Fresh Tagliatelle (from NIGELLA BITES) uses 00 pasta flour, which is a traditional flour for making pasta. Semolina, semola flour and 00 flour are all made from durum wheat, the difference is mainly in the grind of the wheat. When durum wheat is processed, the bran is removed and the wheat then goes through several cycles of grinding and sifting.

Semolina is fairly coarsely ground and is better used for dusting pasta, bread and pizza doughs to stop them from sticking. Or you can use it to make Nigella's Mock Mash. Semola flour is more finely ground than semolina and can be used for pasta (particularly pasta that is to be fully dried), but the pasta will have a slightly coarser texture. Both semolina and semola are yellow in colour. 00 pasta flour is made from very finely ground and sifted wheat and is whiter in colour that semola flour and semolina. For fine pastas such as fresh tagliatelle we would prefer to use 00 flour as the very find grind gives a smooth and elastic pasta. If you use semola flour for the tagliatelle, we suspect the number of eggs used will be the same, but as we have not tried this we are unable to guarantee the results. We would not recommend making the tagliatelle with semolina.