There is no single grain that defines good pasta.
Einkorn, spelt, emmer and rivet each have their own history, genetics and flavour. Buckwheat isn't even a wheat. And British-grown pulses bring another dimension to what pasta can be.
At Carleschi, we believe that choosing the grain is as important as choosing the shape. We work with distinctive crops, explore their individual characteristics and use traditional Italian pasta-making techniques to transform them into something worth celebrating.
Six stories of agriculture, biodiversity and flavour. All beginning in the field.
One of the earliest cultivated wheats, einkorn has a distinctive golden colour and a delicate, complex flavour. We make ours with 100% British-grown organic wholegrain einkorn, stoneground and transformed into pasta that celebrates the grain itself.
Discover einkorn
Spelt is where our pasta story began. A wheat with a long European history and a distinctive, gently nutty flavour. Our pasta is made from British-grown organic wholegrain spelt, without blending it with conventional durum wheat.
Discover spelt
An ancient wheat with roots in the earliest farming communities of the Fertile Crescent, emmer was also a staple of ancient Egypt. With its distinctive earthy, nutty character, this remarkable grain is returning to the Carleschi pastificio.
Discover emmer
Rivet is a remarkable part of Britain's agricultural history, a wheat once grown here and now finding new life. Our work with rivet and Krivet explores how distinctive British wheat varieties can make exceptional pasta without relying on imported durum.
Discover rivet & Krivet
Despite its name, buckwheat isn't wheat at all. This flowering pseudocereal has a long culinary history, particularly in northern Italy, where it gives traditional dishes their distinctive earthy flavour. Buckwheat pasta is returning to Carleschi.
Discover buckwheat
Wholegrain spelt meets British-grown fava beans, wrinkled peas and lentils from Hodmedod's. Three distinctive pasta blends that bring together the character of heritage wheat and the diversity of British-grown pulses.
Discover British pulsesOne of the oldest cultivated wheats in the world, einkorn connects today's fields with the very beginnings of agriculture.
Einkorn was among the first cereals domesticated in the Fertile Crescent more than 10,000 years ago. It helped sustain some of the earliest farming communities, long before the development of modern bread wheat.
Its name comes from the German for "one grain", referring to the single fertile grain usually found in each spikelet. Unlike modern free-threshing wheat, einkorn retains a protective hull around its grain after harvest, which must be removed before milling.
Einkorn is a diploid wheat, with 14 chromosomes, compared with 42 in modern bread wheat. It belongs to a distinct branch of the wheat family and has retained characteristics that make it particularly interesting to growers, millers and pasta makers.
Its grains are relatively small, and its flour has a naturally warm golden colour associated with its carotenoid pigments. Einkorn also has distinctive gluten properties, which influence how its dough behaves during mixing and extrusion. It is wheat and contains gluten.
Einkorn is remarkable for its delicate yet complex aromatic character. In our pasta we find notes reminiscent of honeycomb, chamomile, vanilla, cinnamon and white chocolate, alongside a gentle cereal sweetness.
These are tasting impressions rather than added ingredients. The flavour comes from the grain itself, and our approach is to preserve rather than disguise it.
Our organic einkorn is grown in Britain and stoneground into wholegrain flour by Gilchesters Organics. Milling the complete grain retains its bran, germ and endosperm, giving the flour its distinctive character.
At our Hertfordshire pastificio, we combine the flour with water, extrude the dough through bronze dies and dry the pasta slowly for at least 36 hours at temperatures not exceeding 47°C.
The result is a pasta made entirely from British-grown einkorn, without blending it with conventional durum wheat.
Explore our einkorn pastaBefore modern wheat came to dominate European agriculture, spelt was an important part of the continent's farming and food traditions. For Carleschi, it was where everything began.
Spelt has been cultivated in Europe for thousands of years, particularly in central European regions where it became an established cereal for bread, porridge and other everyday foods.
Like einkorn and emmer, spelt is a hulled wheat. Its grains remain enclosed in tough glumes after threshing and require an additional dehulling stage before milling. This distinguishes it from modern free-threshing bread wheat.
Spelt is a hexaploid wheat, with 42 chromosomes, the same number as modern bread wheat. It is therefore not simply an earlier version of einkorn or emmer, but a distinct wheat with its own agricultural history and characteristics.
As European agriculture intensified, spelt declined in many regions in favour of wheats that were easier to process and generally more productive. Yet it continued to be cultivated, particularly in parts of central Europe, preserving a remarkable diversity of traditional varieties.
Spelt has a gently sweet, nutty and cereal-rich flavour. Stoneground as wholegrain flour, it retains the bran and germ alongside the starchy endosperm, bringing additional depth, colour and character to the finished pasta.
For us, that flavour is not something to hide beneath a sauce. It is an essential part of the dish, equally at home with vegetables, pulses, olive oil, butter or a simple tomato sauce.
When we began making pasta, we chose British-grown organic wholegrain spelt rather than conventional imported durum wheat. It was a deliberate decision: to make pasta rooted in the agriculture of the country where we produce it.
Our spelt is stoneground into wholegrain flour and mixed with water. We extrude the dough through bronze dies and dry the pasta slowly for at least 36 hours at carefully controlled temperatures.
We use 100% spelt flour in our pure spelt pasta, without blending it with durum. The result is a pasta with its own identity, rather than an imitation of conventional pasta.
Explore our spelt pastaAn ancient wheat with an extraordinary history, emmer helped feed the first farming civilisations and belongs to the same evolutionary lineage as the durum wheat used in modern pasta. Now it is returning to Carleschi.
Emmer was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 10,000 years ago and became one of the principal cereals of early agriculture. Alongside barley, it played a central role in the food systems of ancient Egypt, where it was used to make bread and beer.
Its cultivation spread across the Mediterranean and into Europe, where it remained important for centuries. Over time, more easily processed and higher-yielding wheats displaced it in many regions, although traditional emmer cultivation survived in parts of Europe and elsewhere.
Emmer is a tetraploid wheat, with 28 chromosomes, placing it between diploid einkorn and hexaploid bread wheat in terms of genome complexity.
It is closely related to durum wheat. Both belong to the tetraploid wheat lineage, and domesticated emmer is an ancestral form from which free-threshing wheats, including durum, developed.
Unlike durum, emmer is a hulled wheat. Its grain remains enclosed within protective glumes after threshing, requiring dehulling before it can be milled.
In Italy, emmer is commonly known as farro medio, or simply farro. But the word farro can refer to three different hulled wheats: einkorn (farro piccolo), emmer (farro medio) and spelt (farro grande).
They are botanically distinct grains, with different histories, agricultural characteristics and flavours. Emmer is particularly associated with traditional Italian dishes, from soups and grain salads to rustic breads and pasta.
Emmer has a distinctive, rounded flavour, often described as nutty, earthy and gently sweet. Its character is more robust than the delicate aromatic notes of einkorn, making it particularly interesting for wholegrain pasta.
It works beautifully with the ingredients of traditional Italian cooking: mushrooms, pulses, leafy vegetables, olive oil, herbs and slow-cooked sauces.
Bringing emmer back to Carleschi is part of our commitment to making pasta from a wider diversity of grains, rather than relying on a single standardised wheat.
Our approach remains the same: respect the character of the grain, explore its behaviour in milling and extrusion, and use slow drying to produce pasta with a distinctive identity.
Emmer's return is also an opportunity to reconnect Italian pasta-making traditions with one of the cereals that helped shape Mediterranean agriculture long before modern durum became the industry standard.
Emmer returning to CarleschiBefore imported durum became synonymous with pasta, Britain had its own remarkable hard wheats. Rivet is one of them: a distinctive cereal with deep roots in British farming and an exciting future in our pastificio.
Rivet wheat, sometimes known as cone wheat, was cultivated in Britain for centuries. Historically associated with heavier soils and particular regional growing conditions, it formed part of a much more diverse agricultural landscape than the one familiar to us today.
As farming became increasingly specialised and commercial wheat breeding concentrated on higher-yielding varieties, rivet largely disappeared from mainstream British cultivation. Its survival in heritage collections and among specialist growers has made its rediscovery possible.
Rivet belongs to the tetraploid wheat group, with 28 chromosomes, alongside emmer and durum wheat. These wheats share an important evolutionary relationship, although each has its own agricultural and processing characteristics.
This relationship is particularly interesting for pasta making. Durum is prized for its suitability for semolina production and pasta processing, but rivet offers an opportunity to investigate what a historically British-grown tetraploid wheat can contribute to pasta.
The disappearance of crops such as rivet illustrates how agricultural diversity can narrow when farming and food manufacturing favour a relatively small number of commercially dominant varieties.
Bringing rivet back into cultivation is not about rejecting modern agriculture. It is about widening the possibilities: exploring different genetics, flavours, growing characteristics and uses for grains that have largely been overlooked.
At Carleschi, we have explored the pasta-making potential of British-grown rivet wheat through our Krivet Spaghettoni.
Working with a less familiar grain requires attention to its milling characteristics, hydration, dough behaviour and extrusion. Rather than forcing every wheat to behave like conventional durum, we adapt our pasta-making process to the grain.
Bronze extrusion and carefully controlled slow drying allow us to create a pasta that expresses the character of its raw material.
Rivet represents something larger than a single pasta shape. It is evidence that Britain's agricultural history contains crops with untapped culinary possibilities.
By working with these grains, we hope to help create a reason for farmers to grow them again. A grain's future depends not only on preserving its seed, but on finding meaningful uses for the harvest.
Explore Krivet pastaDespite its name, buckwheat isn't wheat at all. It is a flowering plant with a remarkable culinary history, an unmistakable earthy flavour and an important place in more diverse farming systems. Now buckwheat pasta is returning to Carleschi.
Buckwheat belongs to the Polygonaceae family, alongside plants such as rhubarb and sorrel. Unlike wheat, barley and rye, it is not a grass. It is classified as a pseudocereal because its seeds are used in much the same way as cereal grains.
Its small, triangular seeds are enclosed in dark hulls, which are generally removed before milling. The resulting flour has a distinctive grey-brown colour and a flavour quite unlike conventional wheat.
Common buckwheat was domesticated in Asia, with evidence pointing to southwestern China and neighbouring regions. Its cultivation spread across Asia and eventually into Europe, where it became particularly valuable in mountainous and less favourable agricultural areas.
In northern Italy, buckwheat is known as grano saraceno. It became an important ingredient in the cooking of Valtellina, where it is used to make pizzoccheri, the short, flat pasta traditionally served with potatoes, cabbage, butter and cheese.
It also features in polenta taragna, where buckwheat flour is combined with maize, producing a darker, richly flavoured dish. These traditions demonstrate that Italian food has always been more diverse than durum wheat pasta alone.
Buckwheat is a relatively fast-growing crop, capable of completing its life cycle within a short growing season. Its flowers provide nectar and pollen for insects, including bees and other pollinators.
It can also play a useful role in crop rotations and cover-cropping systems. Its rapid growth and canopy development can help suppress weeds, while its different botanical family offers growers another option beyond the familiar cereal crops.
Like any crop, its performance depends on the variety, climate, soil and management. Buckwheat is particularly sensitive to frost, and successful grain production requires suitable growing conditions.
Buckwheat brings a robust, earthy, nutty character to pasta, with toasted and sometimes gently bitter notes. It is a flavour that works particularly well with mushrooms, greens, butter, cheese and other strongly flavoured ingredients.
Its distinctive character is precisely why we value it: it offers something genuinely different from wheat, rather than simply another variation on conventional pasta.
We are bringing buckwheat back into our pasta range as part of our commitment to exploring a wider diversity of crops, flavours and food traditions.
Buckwheat itself is naturally gluten-free, but that does not automatically make a finished pasta product gluten-free. The ingredients, production environment and controls all matter.
As with our other grains, the challenge and pleasure of pasta making lies in understanding the raw material and developing a process that respects its particular qualities.
What happens when British-grown wholegrain spelt meets the remarkable diversity of British pulses? Three distinctive pasta blends, made with fava beans, wrinkled peas and lentils, and a different way of thinking about the crops that belong in our fields and on our plates.
Pulses are the dried edible seeds of leguminous plants. They have been part of human diets and farming systems for thousands of years, from the earliest agricultural communities of the Fertile Crescent to traditional European food cultures.
Unlike cereals, many legumes form a remarkable partnership with soil bacteria called rhizobia. These bacteria live in nodules on the plants' roots and convert atmospheric nitrogen into forms the plants can use.
This process, known as biological nitrogen fixation, can reduce the need for additional nitrogen fertiliser and make legumes valuable components of diverse crop rotations. The benefits depend on the crop, soil and growing conditions.
Fava beans, also known as broad or field beans, are among the oldest cultivated legumes. They have been grown and eaten around the Mediterranean and across Europe for millennia.
Britain has a long history of growing field beans, although much of the harvest has traditionally been used for animal feed. Their potential as an ingredient for human food deserves much greater attention.
Fava beans bring a savoury, earthy character to our pasta, complementing the nutty sweetness of wholegrain spelt.
Wrinkled peas are varieties of field pea whose mature dried seeds have a characteristic wrinkled appearance. This results from differences in how starch is formed and stored within the seed.
Peas have been cultivated for thousands of years, and Britain has a rich history of growing different varieties for food. Wrinkled peas offer an interesting alternative to more familiar smooth-seeded field peas.
In pasta, they contribute a gently sweet, vegetal flavour that sits beautifully alongside the cereal character of spelt.
Lentils are among the earliest domesticated food crops, with archaeological evidence of their cultivation in the ancient Near East.
Although lentils are more commonly associated with Mediterranean and Middle Eastern agriculture, they can also be grown in Britain. Developing reliable markets for British-grown lentils helps encourage farmers to explore a wider range of crops.
Lentils bring a distinctive earthy richness to our pasta, producing a particularly satisfying combination with wholegrain spelt.
Our pulse pasta is made in collaboration with Hodmedod's, a British company dedicated to developing markets for British-grown beans, peas, lentils and other crops that support more diverse farming and food systems.
We combine 70% British-grown organic wholegrain spelt with 30% pulses, creating three different pasta blends: spelt and fava beans, spelt and wrinkled peas, and spelt and lentils.
Each blend has its own flavour, colour and dough characteristics. Making good pasta from these ingredients requires careful attention to hydration, extrusion and drying.
We believe that the future of good food depends partly on recovering the diversity that has been lost from our agricultural landscape.
Cereals and pulses complement one another, both in farming systems and in the kitchen. Bringing them together in pasta is our way of celebrating that relationship, while creating something genuinely delicious.
Explore our pulse pastaThe history of agriculture is also a history of choices.
Over generations, a remarkable diversity of cultivated grains has given way to a smaller number of crops selected for yield, uniformity and ease of processing. Modern agriculture has brought enormous benefits, but it has also narrowed the range of grains we grow, cook and eat.
We believe pasta can play a small but meaningful part in bringing some of that diversity back.
By working with British farmers, millers and growers of distinctive grains and pulses, we help create a reason for these crops to be cultivated, valued and enjoyed.
Each grain asks something different of us as pasta makers. We learn its character, adapt our methods and use traditional Italian craftsmanship to bring out its particular qualities.
The result is more than a different kind of pasta. It is a connection between the field, the people who cultivate it and the food we put on our tables.
Different grains. Different possibilities. Better reasons to keep growing them.
