The question of the hour is: where has all the bucatini gone? The pandemic shelves are bare of toilet paper, bleach, and …bucatini?? Apparently so. This article, “What the Hole Is Going On? The very real, totally bizarre bucatini shortage of 2020,” by Rachel Handler in Grub Street delves into the situation in great, and highly amusing, detail.
Now, I admit I was totally unaware of this problem, not having had occasion to buy pasta in a supermarket for a few months. I have several boxes of my preferred dried shapes in my pantry (bucatini not among them), and when I have the urge for fresh pasta, I head out to the Olney Farmers Market to patronize our new fresh pasta and cheese vendor.
At the Open Hand booth, John Wood offers a changing variety of shaped and stuffed pastas, all made by hand, and fresh cheeses such as mozzarella, ricotta, and burrata. A former restaurant chef, he is now exploring new avenues of income due to the pandemic. This past Sunday, sure enough, he had bucatini on offer.
He had seen the article. I asked him if it’s really harder to make bucatini than other extruded shapes. He gave me a resounding “No!” You don’t need to go to extra trouble to form the hole, he said. The shape of the die and the pressure setting have to be right, and it’s just like making other long shapes. That excuse is bogus!
I am willing to believe, though, that the manufacturers have cut back on making their less popular shapes in order to get enough product on the shelves. Home cooking has apparently encouraged an increased consumption of pasta, and shortages must be averted by ensuring enough production of the sorts of pasta that the hoi polloi will be satisfied with. This does not include the rather more rarified shapes, such as bucatini.
Another theory explored in the Grub Street article postulated that people are using them to replace banned plastic straws in drinks. This seems pretty far-out to me; the pasta would get soggy and gross before your drink was gone, and as a rep from the National Pasta Association pointed out, it might be unsafe to consume raw pasta. I got the distinct impression this theory was presented tube-in-cheek.
Then there was a rabbit-hole involving the FDA, nutrition standards regulations, a complaint against one pasta manufacturer, ramen noodles, and FOIA requests. Even with a background in standardization work, I have to admit that my eyes started glazing over as I read.
But that is not the point of bucatini. The point of bucatini is the eating of it. I cooked up some of John’s product and applied a nice sweet-pepper tomato sauce and grated, aged Gouda cheese. Rachel Handler claims that it’s the most sexy of pastas and even “self-aware,” as its bouncy texture gives it an ability to interact with the eater. I wouldn’t go that far, and admittedly, Ms. Handler was referencing the dried version, not the fresh; but John’s had a very satisfactory chew and ability to deliver sauce without being overwhelmed (due to the hole). It’s even (dare I admit?) slurpable.
So I hope the bucatini shortage will soon be resolved for those without access to an excellent, local farmers market (yes, even in the dead of winter). Meanwhile, buon appetito!
