How to Select Pasta

Any suggestions on brands of quality hard pasta?

I often buy Rustichella d'Abruzzo.

Here is a link to the what the packaging looks like (from Amazon).

You can most often tell quality dried pasta from cheaper brands, simply by looking at them. Quality pasta looks a bit rough and is sort of powdery white.

The ones that we find in the average grocery store will all be teflon?

I am guessing that you are asking if most of the pasta that you find in the grocery store is made with teflon dyes? If this is your question, then yes is the answer.

However these days more and more grocery stores are also carrying a few varieties of quality pastas as well.

Hello, Martha Stewart recommended Maestri Pastai and had their representative on her show; he was proud to describe how they use traditional brass extrusion from very old brass plates. I tried several varieties, it is great. It does have the whiter shade and rough surfaces for grabbing the sauce, as described in the lessons. It was very reasonably priced also, I bought it at www.ilovepastashop.com. The home website for the manufacturer in Italy is http://www.maestripastaiusa.com/products.html

Does anyone has experience doing extruded pasta with a Kitchenaid? I tried using the pasta maker plates (KA attachment - http://www.kitchenaid.com/flash.cmd?/#/product/SNPA/)but it doesn't work quite well; I started making the dougth with the dougth attachment and then I extruded with the plates, but I feel it was too hard for the machine. Any suggestion?

I have not used the KitchenAid attachment but it sounds like the dough may not have had enough moisture.

You may want to add a touch more water. For more discussion on this see the forum discussion under Making Laminated Pasta. Cheers!