Semolina pasta turns orange/brown while cooking

Hello,

My partner makes dried pasta to sell at a farmers market and is having some issues we can't find an explanation for.

It's a simple semolina, flour and water dough, rolled, hand shaped (looks like a spring's feather) and air dried on trays.

once batch had to be thrown out because it started smelling like yeast during drying, the smell wasn't good at all and we saw white little dots all over the pasta. That's when we figured it would have been just too humid to air dry the pasta like we normally would (it's been raining here non-stop, indoor humidity at 65-75%RH).

This week he made another batch and again, bad yeast-y smell. Humidity in the house was lower this time. We cooked some and the one side of the pasta turned dark orange/light brown while cooking! it looked almost like roasted pasta.

Because of the spring feather shape we know what side of the noodle was touching the work surface, but the browning isn't always on the same side, some are brown on the outside, some on the inside.

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Now I'm wondering if there is a bacteria that reacts with heat or if it could be the protein from semolina or flour. Any other ideas? has anybody seen this before?

Hi Jackobelly!

Could you please advise how and where you are cooking the pasta? What time / temperature combo? Steam or not steam? What percentage of semolina and egg? 

Hi Jackobelly!

 

Could you please advise how and where you are cooking the pasta? What time / temperature combo? Steam or not steam? What percentage of semolina and egg? 

@Alarico2002

Thanks for asking!

Normally the consumer cooks the pasta at home. So we just cooked a sample in boiling water for 10min.

The pasta does not contain egg, it's 38% semolina, 38% flour and 24% water.

Check mineral/iron content of water.

I would do a cook test with bottled water or distilled water to see if you get a similar result