(ragtime music) - [Narrator] Listen, pasta is delicious.

You know it, I know it, everyone knows it.

I love pasta.

I mean, how could you not?

I'm actually recording this from a bathtub full of cooked noodles right now.

(record scratches) (gentle music) So anyway, only three ingredients go into this delectable dish, eggs, water and flour.

That gives you two main chemical components, starches, which are carbohydrates, and proteins.

There's some minerals and vitamins there too.

Oh, and also water.

The type of flour is important.

Pasta uses Durham wheat, which is one of the harder varieties of wheat out there.

That makes it harder to mill, which means after it's ground up, the particles of semolina flour are not as fine as the all purpose flour you have in your kitchen.

Since it results in larger particles, not all of the proteins that are in the grain are released.

That means that pasta dough is stretchy but not sticky like bread or cookies.

Pasta dough stretchiness makes it easier to flatten into sheets and to cut into shapes.

These days, a lot of pasta gets made by extrusion, forcing the dough through shaped holes, kind of like Play-Doh, except that you're actually supposed to eat the pasta.

At the microscopic level, pasta dough is a network of proteins, holding together starch particles that make for an overall springy mass.

The cooking process is all about manipulating the protein and the starch interactions to get that perfect al dente pasta.

As the pasta cooks, starch particles absorb water and start to form a gel, which makes the pasta soft and gummy.

Thanks to the tangled network of proteins, the starches are tracked inside the pasta noodles.

If there wasn't enough protein in your pasta dough starches like amylose would leak out, making your fettuccine sticky and clumpy.

Some carbohydrates leak out no matter what.

If you've ever forgotten to stir your pasta, you might have found yourself trying to eat a single clump of noodles.

It's one of the reason cooks like to keep their pot at a rolling boil, so the pasta pieces keep moving around and don't stick to each other.

Now, the question of, should I add something to the water?

Top chefs like Lidia Bastianich or Alton Brown insist on not adding oil to the pasta water.

They contend it leaves the sheen on the pasta and the sauce won't stick.

That said, other celeb chefs like Gordon Ramsay insist on adding oil, saying it keeps the pasta from sticking together.

Food scientists we've spoken to think most of any oil you put into the pot will be washed away when you pour out the cooked pasta and water.

If any is left, it would not have much effect on soft stickiness.

What you should add to the pasta water is salt.

Why?

Flavor.

Salt is our main flavor enhancer and if you were to enter a food competition without salt, well, let's just say you wouldn't last very long.

Last pro tip of your salted up pasta water, before you drain your cooked spaghetti, add a ladle full of that salty, starchy water to your sauce to help thicken and delicion it.

When it comes to eating the cooked pasta, the gelatinous starch helps sauce stick to your cooked penne.

And it's why you should avoid this classic mistake.

Never rinse your pasta after it's done cooking because you're rinsing off all that sticky starch.