I feel like after this series he will be so sick of pasta making, he will just shove the machine somewhere out of sight and avoid pasta meals for at least a month.
@@akindofmagick The baker where I used to live loved to teach people how to make bread. You could think this was against their business, but it was the opposite because: 1) People learned and got used to eating good "premium bread", 2) after some weeks, people realized how time-consuming it was to prepare good bread, and preferred to buy it instead.
A month?!!!! Hahaha! You clearly haven't been around here long enough... I am sure you are looking forward to a Ramen dedicated series, as it's technically still pasta.
I saw this pasta cutter issue coming, I looked up your model from a freeze frame a few weeks ago out of curiosity and went "oh no, they don't make a cutter for this model! Alex will have to engineer his own!".
@@terrijuanette486 What I said wasn't meant in a negative way :) Sometimes I find it a bit obvious how he fails on purpose but I still love watching his videos!
Never in my entire life, have I seen a cook nerd who's also engineering nerd. This is top tier. I should probably do this kind of project for my master's project xD. I don't know what's the word top beyond the top. But this is above top tier!
His delving into the science behind the food is one of the reasons I like his work too. I find Alton Brown in a similar vein. One of the best cooks I know personally is a chemist, we have fun experimenting in the kitchen. After all food is a multi-disciplinary field involving chemistry, biochemistry, nutrition, microbiology and engineering.
It's pretty much a universal electrical engineering experience to try to turn on your prototype/device-under-test/serviced unit, panic for a minute that you fucked something up _really_ badly when nothing happens, and then realise you forgot to plug it in. =V (Well, maybe not in industries where stuff's dangerous. Heavy industrial machinery, power generation and distribution and the like have rigorous safety procedures behind them.)
@@Laogeodritt nah it's common there too. Source: frequently works on control systems for life safety equipment. This is why we test stuff, so we can iron out the idiocy before it is mission critical
This is probably a good life lesson for a lot of people and kids, who are watching. That's determination! Things go wrong and you try again. You can't buy something, then make it! There are no excuses. You don't know something? Then read a study or talk to an expert. Beautiful! I like that kind of spirit.
I was happy that they don't make a cutter for his machine. I'd much rather see him make it. It does look very simple. It's a plastic bracket with two knobs for mounting, a small motor and a cutter with a gear. We have all of the necessary parts and materials in my local hackerspace.
Premièrement, je suis tellement content de t’avoir trouvé sur UA-cam, que j’écrit en français, un exploit TRÈS rare pour moi. Secondly, I believe that your channel & its content is one of the HIGHEST calibers of content on UA-cam. The editing, the premise, the script, the pacing, your natural & authentic personality, not too also mention, the insane amount of work, time & effort you have put in to make homemade dry pasta, when ALL of this could be avoided for €2 at your local grocery store, but you do it for our entertainment. Such an amazing channel, félicitation, continue le bon travail, & I will be watching every video you put out. Merci!
Bro if you can get this down, you can easily patent and sell it. a pasta dryer for consumer and even commercial use would be huge, you're doing a huge service to the culinary world. Always going beyond the limits of a normal chef. Love your work
He actually cannot patent it. The videos are "prior art", which makes patent applications invalid. You can only patent inventions you have not already shared to the public.
Alex you improve the racks even further. Trim the metal mesh form the surround frame. Essentially remove everything but the outside square and then wrap with your new mesh.
I agree, the metal would be affecting the air directly around it, not just where it touches the pasta. A non-conductive replacement would keep the pasta from heating faster and cooling slower on the bottom side from being so near to the metal. Each segment of the metal mesh would be radiating but only very close to itself.
I really appreciate your persistence with this. There are so many things that I'd like to do from scratch, but the technical obstacles and machinery required just isn't something I want to invest in. But it is so seductive, to do something from basics. I want to build a house, but I have to plant a forest first!
Only Alex can make modifying a pasta dryer feel like an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Fantastic work. The level of research, passion, and dedication to the smallest items is top-tier. I love every single video.
I feel like you could 3D print a housing that holds an RC motor that spins a blade from an old knife that you can just pop over the extruder. Attach a potentiometer to regulate the speed and you're good to go. You could even just use rechargable 9v batteries so you don't have to worry about plugging into anything.
3d print, form out of some thin sheet steel, there's plenty of options. You could probably even Bubba something together from the plumbing isle if you weren't fussed about it looking good.
This has quickly become one of my favorite channels. Your ability to explain the process and how deeply you delve into understanding the "why" is parfait
I started following the channel about a year ago for the interesting cooking content. But the entire reasearch, tooling and crafting takes the channel to a whole new dimention. Add to that the camerawork, video and sound editing and I can confidently say that you have the best channel on youtube. Keep it coming.
Have to give you credit Alex, you are never one to give up. Solving one problem after another all the while being extremly joyful and very entertaining at the same time. Love your videos
What Alex is trying to do here with an active drying process can be done with a passive drying process, just over a much longer time. The goal is to have the mass of the pasta dry evenly and not have a moisture gradient from the core to the outside surface. By placing the drying racks in a small, closed area, like a large Tupperware, the dry room air that is initially in it will become more humid from the moisture drying off of the pasta until they meet an equilibrium. That would be the resting period. Then the Tupperware is “burped” allowing the high humidity air to be exchanged with the low humidity room air and the process repeats itself until the pasta is at the desired moisture percentage. The rate at which the pasta fries can be regulated by how long the pasta dries before going in the sealed container, how often the container is burped and how long it is left open while burping. The main concern would be mold/bacteria if allowed to be too moist for too long.
That might work or the pasta would mold like bread does when kept in plastic over time, even when taken out periodically. Mold is the enemy in air-tight plastic.
@@terrijuanette486 bread has much more moisture and still takes a couple days to mould. Should be fine, especially as more and more of the water evaporates off
I think you need to approach this in the same way the metal is annealed when you do jewelry making. The pasta is trying to contract but you need to heat and cool it otherwise it will crack. I think this can be achieved with thermal and moisture cycling. I'm a medical device engineer and a keen cook. Really enjoy your video's and your analytical approach to problem solving. If you haven't reached the answer yet atomising water might be a area to look into.
This pasta series is absolute gold. I really hope that we get to see the end of it ! So much work was put into those videos , I know you will succeeed !
La sequence ingénieur m'a forcé a mettre pause, me lever aller fumer un coup, me faire a manger puis revenir... T'est vraiment un personage incroyable cher Alex
“What can possibly go wrong with this?” Famous last words 😂 but if anyone can do it it’s going to be Alex! Love the passion and effort you put into all your series and can’t wait for the next video!
Hi Alex! I just wanted to let you know: that after using the pasta dyes for a while they tend to get a layer of protective oxidization which easily scratches off with harder metals. It is a reaction that all bronze has naturally, especially when you put them in water after use to keep the pasta from drying. Think of the protective layer on the statue of liberty for example. This is why a lot of older pastificios have stained, dull-looking pasta dyes that seem like they have a lot of scratches. Also, congratulations on continuing your journey to making high-quality, dried pasta at home! Bonne chance!
What you have been showing me with you look into traditional foods is just how important it is to preserve cultural traditions and methodologies so that we can learn and expand upon what the past has to teach us. We have been drying pasta for hundreds of years before we had machines to help us with this process, they learned it over generations of trial and error. Showing us the origins and tradition associated with many of these foods then showing us the modern "hacksmith" way we can get these done has really brought me to look at food differently and what I can and cannot do at home easily to make my home cooked meals that much better and in some cases more affordable and easier to approach.
For consistent drying process it would be beneficial to start with dried air. You can do it by cooling it down below the drew point or make it go through a bed of silica gel. By doing this you don't have to change drying conditions depending on the weather forecast. Thank you so much for your videos.
I have a feeling that each new part is getting shorter and soon be like tiktok looped video. Just when I made some food to comfortably enjoy your video it coming to an end)))
I've been watching your videos for the past few years and I absolutely love them. Please keep going Alex, you're just a little while off from becoming the mad genius inventor🙌
J'adore suivre ta chaine, tu es génial. De prendre chaques problèmes, faire l'analyse, trouver la solution et de mettre en place. Je me délecte de te suivre. Étant un gros mangeur de pâtes, J'adore. BRAVO du Québec
I don't know if you have a hot glue gun but when attaching fabric to anything, it is the bombdiggity! It's faster than tying string or sewing it on, the fabric would still lay flat, the hot glue would pull right off if you ever need to remove it and the dryer would never get hot enough to re-melt the glue if all you use it for is to dry pasta. If you need to make more racks, I highly suggest it.
I think we don´t appreciate enough the efforts and extend that this man goes to just to demostrate the point of food, in this case DRY PASTA The combo of engineer and cook it´s got to be one of my favourite points of this channel. Keep it up Alex, keep it up
I think a simple solution would be a 2 sided blade on a fulcrum above the pasta output that swings back and forth. Might be able to use an RC servo or something similar and use a microcontroller like an arduino or teensy to control the speed of the blade swing and pause time between cuts. Another option would be a single blade that rotates around like you saw in the video you showed, that could be done with a stepper motor and micro controller.
You have a 3d printer. You should be able to mock up something with a small electric motor the same as that pasta cutter you showed easily. The only problem is making sure the 3d printed parts don't come in contact with any of the pasta itself (most 3d printing plastics are not food safe sadly)
Hi Alex, have you thought about using a tall cardboard/wooden box? Install an intake vent/fan (pc cooling fans are great for this) at the bottom, and an exhaust fan at the top (that way you have a column of moving air from the bottom to the top). By adding a small heat source you'd introduce a means of drying your pasta using warm air (so long as it isn't humid air). (I used to use a smaller setup when making biltong at home and a 40w bulb as a mild heat source). By varying the voltage to the fans you also get to moderate the air flow rate.
I feel like we should be insulting you in a caring way and telling you that you should take a rest, you are doing an amazing series and going above and beyond with your craft. It's epic and wonderful, and we hope you are algo resting well Alex. Salut from Argentina 🙏🔥
PASTA CUTTER DIY ! how to make : use fishing line mount it on one side using spring and on the other side mount some motor that when spinning will mow the fishing line up and down + do the "cutting motion" like knife alternative option is to make U shape arm for the fishing line / some knife/ razor with cutting edge on both sides mount it on one side to the hinge and on the other side make a horizontal slot + motor with arm + some bolt etc so it can move the arm up and down
Rather than making more pasta at a time to keep the humidity up, maybe you can try active humidification. They make small ultrasonic humidifiers for aquariums that can add humidity without adding heat and can be turned on and off rapidly. It should be easy to integrate into your existing control board/code and you can just pipe in the humidified air somewhere that isn't directly onto your pasta.
Shouldn't you place a condenser unit in the ducting? Reason for this is remove that moisture. If you turn it on during the first 50% of drying period it will remove moisture, in the remaining 50% turn it off, so the internal moisture can build up again for the upcoming resting phase. It might also help adding the capability of humidifying with a ... humidifier 🤔👌
Alex, you are almost perfectly and absolutely strapped for another pandemic. You never have to worry about the stores having no pasta if you can just make the same stuff on command
Once you fully automate the process you should sell your own brand of smaller batch pasta. Maybe create your own dye so you have a unique pasta shape. Just add the ingredients to the mixer, create an auto tipper when the dough is ready that drops into a hopper for the pasta machine so that you can process larger batches. There is a conveyor below the chopper that leads around the parameter of your shops ceiling, inside square ducting, with different zones of heating, circulation and resting, before the dried pasta drops off into large bins.
This series is fun to watch. Idea for your next series... cured meats? Maybe you can travel to Parma where they make Prosciutto and Calabria for Soppressata and 'Nduja, and then build your own curing machine from a wine cooler with added functionality to control humidity. 😀
This is a very similar idea as my diesseration that I just completed for me Aerospace Engineering degree! Using Arduino and relays to work in a sequencing matter for an aircraft landing rig, so cool to see you do this Alex!
after this series is done, I would love to see you go back to all of the skills you've learned over the years to see if you still remember how to do them. think it would be a cool one off video.
This is absolutely epic. I Love Arduino programming but this is taking it to the next practical level. Absolutely fantastic. Alex next video please show us the humidity sensor and the temperature sensor location and the type of sensor used. I think you may have a problem there.
I am weirdly invested in watching this guy dedicate his life to making something sold cheaply in stores everywhere on the planet by the millions of tons.
“It’s really painful And tedious what I’m doing at the moment.” I cracked up laughing when I heard this. I was watching this while knitting on 1mm wooden needles and was cursing my yarn for splitting just as you were cursing! I feel your pain!
Finally figured out the watch!! Seiko srpg, now im gonna have to buy one. Thanks a lot😂 Add to my collection of watches from some of my favorite people I love to watch😁😁
I feel like for the cutter you should reach out to this old tony again. he helped you with pasta before so to continue the theme and to get a high fidelity cutter suited to your machine i feel like thats the best call. plus id love to see another colab
Alex, loving all of this but it DOES bring up the question: Without electric fans and instruments measuring humidity and the ability to have "rest periods" or not....how did all those Italian grandmas over the ages manage to make dry pasta anyhow? What is, in effect, the "analog" real world equivalent of all of your wonderful tech?
Another commenter explained this, they have a dry cellar, during dry months, they would lay the pasta in big tables in the cellar, cover them, and ventilate the room every other day, after 10 to 15 days they would have a ton of dried pasta, enough to last all the rainy months.
You can also watch the last video, where he describes the town in Italy that had intervals of dry and moist air move through the town. They had a natural process to make it possible.
They would most often buy it, just like they buy bread instead of making it. When my Italian grandmother dried pasta, it just got hung up on coat hangers and dowels or whatever. It was kept inside during summer to dry slowly. Maybe there was a fan. It's been a long time.
@@juliaf_ True, it's just not the tradition in Italy, at least not the part I'm familiar with, maybe somewhere. You buy bread from the baker. Kinda the same with pasta. Pasta fresca is made at home, but pasta secca is purchased. I think if you go back a few hundred years, communal ovens were common, which I suppose is in between using a bakery and baking at home.
pastacutter should be easy, in fact, its really cool, that the whole thing isnt too difficult to make, but i wonder if it wouldnt make more sense to build the dryer from scratch? like you could use heated beds from 3d printers as your source of heat (i dont know how responsive the machine has to be though, a print bed keeps heat for a pretty long time) - you could even control the thing completely with g-code!
Go on and create a company and sell those things. Home roasting coffee is also a slowly growing business. A couple of years, no one even considered this and now there are plenty of mid to high class home roasting machines. And i see some similarities between home roasting and home drying of pasta. Go for it!
Love your content man. Could you make a video about garlic and/or timing of roasting stuff. I feel like i could learn a lot from your approach and i still struggle with the basics, time.
While having an automatic cutter is a desirable goal… I think rather than just adding “more pasta” to the dryer, I think you could achieve a similar goal by just adding an additional source of moisture. You can start with a moistened sponge. It should dry more slowly than the wet tissues.
Alex, dear French cousin, I feel like at this point you deserve Italian citizenship, if I was the president I will gladly make you Italian honoris causa for the love and passion you demonstrate towards Italian cuisine
True engineer. Getting tired of repeating a task so building a system to repeat the task for you, but the building of the system will certainly be more difficult than the original task.
2 роки тому
Alex is the best example of trying to fix a 6min manual task with a 6h (or days) of engineering
I feel like after this series he will be so sick of pasta making, he will just shove the machine somewhere out of sight and avoid pasta meals for at least a month.
Being sick of pasta? Impossible please consult your local Italian.
Being sick of struggling with pasta: sure. Being sick of eating pasta: jamais!! Solution: buy quality pasta!
@@akindofmagick The baker where I used to live loved to teach people how to make bread. You could think this was against their business, but it was the opposite because: 1) People learned and got used to eating good "premium bread", 2) after some weeks, people realized how time-consuming it was to prepare good bread, and preferred to buy it instead.
A month?!!!! Hahaha! You clearly haven't been around here long enough... I am sure you are looking forward to a Ramen dedicated series, as it's technically still pasta.
Ask him about the last time he made ramen 😂
Not sure you know that the actor in your opening who says, "I like that! That's respect!" Is Tony Sirico, who died yesterday at 79. RIP.
rip to the actor
Pauly! Damn
Rest in peace
RIP
Rip
I saw this pasta cutter issue coming, I looked up your model from a freeze frame a few weeks ago out of curiosity and went "oh no, they don't make a cutter for this model! Alex will have to engineer his own!".
...and THAT is 1/2 the fun of this channel! I love watching Alex make things. So cool!!
Plot twist: Alex knew this and bought it anyway so that he would have an excuse to make his own pasta cutter..
@@timoheinrich8763 Probably....but isn't that part of the enjoyment of this channel? gotta love it!
@@terrijuanette486 What I said wasn't meant in a negative way :)
Sometimes I find it a bit obvious how he fails on purpose but I still love watching his videos!
You are going above and beyond with this series. Absolutely killing it. Keep it up ❤️❤️❤️👌
Never in my entire life, have I seen a cook nerd who's also engineering nerd. This is top tier. I should probably do this kind of project for my master's project xD. I don't know what's the word top beyond the top. But this is above top tier!
sadly he misses the point, his dough isn't good, all this drying technology isn't needed, at all, (i have been making pasta for 40 years)
Perhaps you could specify for his and our benefit? Unless it means divulging trade secrets of course 😉
his dough is not homogenous, it’s probably a bit dry, and it didn’t rest long enough, that is why it is so rough coming out of the die
His delving into the science behind the food is one of the reasons I like his work too. I find Alton Brown in a similar vein. One of the best cooks I know personally is a chemist, we have fun experimenting in the kitchen. After all food is a multi-disciplinary field involving chemistry, biochemistry, nutrition, microbiology and engineering.
I admit, I'm excited. This channel is at its best when Alex has to start doing some engineering. This has been a great series thanks to that.
i know this episode will eventually come, i actually skipped all the pasta videos and only watch yesterday episode and this
Alex: "I am an electrical engineer"
Also Alex: *forgets to plug in the machine*
and calls it a socket too xD
And that's exactly what makes him an elite electrical engineer! xD
It's pretty much a universal electrical engineering experience to try to turn on your prototype/device-under-test/serviced unit, panic for a minute that you fucked something up _really_ badly when nothing happens, and then realise you forgot to plug it in. =V
(Well, maybe not in industries where stuff's dangerous. Heavy industrial machinery, power generation and distribution and the like have rigorous safety procedures behind them.)
@@Laogeodritt nah it's common there too. Source: frequently works on control systems for life safety equipment. This is why we test stuff, so we can iron out the idiocy before it is mission critical
Trust me, that’s the proof that he’s a bonafide electrical engineer
This is probably a good life lesson for a lot of people and kids, who are watching. That's determination! Things go wrong and you try again. You can't buy something, then make it! There are no excuses. You don't know something? Then read a study or talk to an expert. Beautiful! I like that kind of spirit.
Your commitment is amazing Alex. This series as a whole is definitely top tier content.
I was happy that they don't make a cutter for his machine. I'd much rather see him make it. It does look very simple. It's a plastic bracket with two knobs for mounting, a small motor and a cutter with a gear. We have all of the necessary parts and materials in my local hackerspace.
Premièrement, je suis tellement content de t’avoir trouvé sur UA-cam, que j’écrit en français, un exploit TRÈS rare pour moi.
Secondly, I believe that your channel & its content is one of the HIGHEST calibers of content on UA-cam. The editing, the premise, the script, the pacing, your natural & authentic personality, not too also mention, the insane amount of work, time & effort you have put in to make homemade dry pasta, when ALL of this could be avoided for €2 at your local grocery store, but you do it for our entertainment.
Such an amazing channel, félicitation, continue le bon travail, & I will be watching every video you put out.
Merci!
Bro if you can get this down, you can easily patent and sell it. a pasta dryer for consumer and even commercial use would be huge, you're doing a huge service to the culinary world. Always going beyond the limits of a normal chef. Love your work
He actually cannot patent it. The videos are "prior art", which makes patent applications invalid. You can only patent inventions you have not already shared to the public.
What crazy person wants to dry their own pasta at home though?
@@ForeverMasterless Lots of people.
Alex you improve the racks even further. Trim the metal mesh form the surround frame. Essentially remove everything but the outside square and then wrap with your new mesh.
I agree, the metal would be affecting the air directly around it, not just where it touches the pasta. A non-conductive replacement would keep the pasta from heating faster and cooling slower on the bottom side from being so near to the metal. Each segment of the metal mesh would be radiating but only very close to itself.
I really appreciate your persistence with this. There are so many things that I'd like to do from scratch, but the technical obstacles and machinery required just isn't something I want to invest in. But it is so seductive, to do something from basics. I want to build a house, but I have to plant a forest first!
Only Alex can make modifying a pasta dryer feel like an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Fantastic work. The level of research, passion, and dedication to the smallest items is top-tier. I love every single video.
I feel like you could 3D print a housing that holds an RC motor that spins a blade from an old knife that you can just pop over the extruder. Attach a potentiometer to regulate the speed and you're good to go. You could even just use rechargable 9v batteries so you don't have to worry about plugging into anything.
A turning wheel with a knife blade spinning at adjustable speeds would be great.
That would be the easy way, but this is first and foremost for entertainment.
Great idea.
3d print, form out of some thin sheet steel, there's plenty of options. You could probably even Bubba something together from the plumbing isle if you weren't fussed about it looking good.
The motor can be geared down to a lower speed for more torque
This has quickly become one of my favorite channels. Your ability to explain the process and how deeply you delve into understanding the "why" is parfait
Ta détermination dans tout ce que tu entreprend est admirable sincèrement! Hâte de voir la suite de l'aventure! ✨
I started following the channel about a year ago for the interesting cooking content. But the entire reasearch, tooling and crafting takes the channel to a whole new dimention. Add to that the camerawork, video and sound editing and I can confidently say that you have the best channel on youtube.
Keep it coming.
Have to give you credit Alex, you are never one to give up. Solving one problem after another all the while being extremly joyful and very entertaining at the same time. Love your videos
RIP Tony Sirico 🪦🙏
I'm so tired of waiting...I want to see this guy successfully make dried pasta! THESE CLIFFHANGERS AAAAHHHHH!
What Alex is trying to do here with an active drying process can be done with a passive drying process, just over a much longer time. The goal is to have the mass of the pasta dry evenly and not have a moisture gradient from the core to the outside surface. By placing the drying racks in a small, closed area, like a large Tupperware, the dry room air that is initially in it will become more humid from the moisture drying off of the pasta until they meet an equilibrium. That would be the resting period. Then the Tupperware is “burped” allowing the high humidity air to be exchanged with the low humidity room air and the process repeats itself until the pasta is at the desired moisture percentage. The rate at which the pasta fries can be regulated by how long the pasta dries before going in the sealed container, how often the container is burped and how long it is left open while burping. The main concern would be mold/bacteria if allowed to be too moist for too long.
That might work or the pasta would mold like bread does when kept in plastic over time, even when taken out periodically. Mold is the enemy in air-tight plastic.
@@terrijuanette486 bread has much more moisture and still takes a couple days to mould. Should be fine, especially as more and more of the water evaporates off
@@juliaf_ Really? Baked bread has more moisture than unbaked pasta? I admit I don't know the ratios but that just seems odd to me. I'm sure I'm wrong.
I think you need to approach this in the same way the metal is annealed when you do jewelry making. The pasta is trying to contract but you need to heat and cool it otherwise it will crack. I think this can be achieved with thermal and moisture cycling. I'm a medical device engineer and a keen cook. Really enjoy your video's and your analytical approach to problem solving. If you haven't reached the answer yet atomising water might be a area to look into.
That's an idea!
This pasta series is absolute gold. I really hope that we get to see the end of it ! So much work was put into those videos , I know you will succeeed !
❤️❤️ Thanks for putting in so much hard work for this series Alex and editing team! ❤️❤️
La sequence ingénieur m'a forcé a mettre pause, me lever aller fumer un coup, me faire a manger puis revenir...
T'est vraiment un personage incroyable cher Alex
“What can possibly go wrong with this?” Famous last words 😂 but if anyone can do it it’s going to be Alex! Love the passion and effort you put into all your series and can’t wait for the next video!
Hi Alex! I just wanted to let you know: that after using the pasta dyes for a while they tend to get a layer of protective oxidization which easily scratches off with harder metals. It is a reaction that all bronze has naturally, especially when you put them in water after use to keep the pasta from drying. Think of the protective layer on the statue of liberty for example. This is why a lot of older pastificios have stained, dull-looking pasta dyes that seem like they have a lot of scratches.
Also, congratulations on continuing your journey to making high-quality, dried pasta at home! Bonne chance!
Very impressive video, love it way more than the ones where u are less involved
What you have been showing me with you look into traditional foods is just how important it is to preserve cultural traditions and methodologies so that we can learn and expand upon what the past has to teach us. We have been drying pasta for hundreds of years before we had machines to help us with this process, they learned it over generations of trial and error.
Showing us the origins and tradition associated with many of these foods then showing us the modern "hacksmith" way we can get these done has really brought me to look at food differently and what I can and cannot do at home easily to make my home cooked meals that much better and in some cases more affordable and easier to approach.
For consistent drying process it would be beneficial to start with dried air. You can do it by cooling it down below the drew point or make it go through a bed of silica gel. By doing this you don't have to change drying conditions depending on the weather forecast.
Thank you so much for your videos.
I am truly enjoying these dry pasta segments.
Thank you for sharing your [scientific] journey.
There's the Alex I know and love. It's always great to see you build things
I have a feeling that each new part is getting shorter and soon be like tiktok looped video. Just when I made some food to comfortably enjoy your video it coming to an end)))
I've been watching your videos for the past few years and I absolutely love them. Please keep going Alex, you're just a little while off from becoming the mad genius inventor🙌
Just finished the last custom drying build video with the cliffhanger interview and now you upload this. Perfect timing!
I love how this series passed from gastronomic tourism in Rome to hard engineering with papers, meetings, automation , data collection, etc.
RIP to Tony Sirico :(
These videos are so exciting. Thank you Alex for these awesome videos!
J'adore suivre ta chaine, tu es génial. De prendre chaques problèmes, faire l'analyse, trouver la solution et de mettre en place. Je me délecte de te suivre. Étant un gros mangeur de pâtes, J'adore. BRAVO du Québec
I don't know if you have a hot glue gun but when attaching fabric to anything, it is the bombdiggity! It's faster than tying string or sewing it on, the fabric would still lay flat, the hot glue would pull right off if you ever need to remove it and the dryer would never get hot enough to re-melt the glue if all you use it for is to dry pasta. If you need to make more racks, I highly suggest it.
I think we don´t appreciate enough the efforts and extend that this man goes to just to demostrate the point of food, in this case DRY PASTA
The combo of engineer and cook it´s got to be one of my favourite points of this channel.
Keep it up Alex, keep it up
There's nothing better than seeing a new Alex video pop up in your feed!
I think a simple solution would be a 2 sided blade on a fulcrum above the pasta output that swings back and forth. Might be able to use an RC servo or something similar and use a microcontroller like an arduino or teensy to control the speed of the blade swing and pause time between cuts. Another option would be a single blade that rotates around like you saw in the video you showed, that could be done with a stepper motor and micro controller.
I think these episodes are the best of what this channel is about. A crazy engineer sciencing the shit out of his cooking ambitions. Great job!
We missed you, glad you are dropping more vids.
It's really awesome seeing the evolution from French Guy, so just Alex. You've done amazing work, and your Italian is hilarious.
honestly alot of people said it before me but. BRILIANT
You have a 3d printer. You should be able to mock up something with a small electric motor the same as that pasta cutter you showed easily. The only problem is making sure the 3d printed parts don't come in contact with any of the pasta itself (most 3d printing plastics are not food safe sadly)
ABS plastic is food safe. And if Alex is using something else, the plastic can always be coated with shellac (which is food safe).
simply amazing how much dedication you have- also I love your yt shorts, keep it up Alex
Hi Alex, have you thought about using a tall cardboard/wooden box? Install an intake vent/fan (pc cooling fans are great for this) at the bottom, and an exhaust fan at the top (that way you have a column of moving air from the bottom to the top). By adding a small heat source you'd introduce a means of drying your pasta using warm air (so long as it isn't humid air). (I used to use a smaller setup when making biltong at home and a 40w bulb as a mild heat source). By varying the voltage to the fans you also get to moderate the air flow rate.
I feel like we should be insulting you in a caring way and telling you that you should take a rest, you are doing an amazing series and going above and beyond with your craft. It's epic and wonderful, and we hope you are algo resting well Alex. Salut from Argentina 🙏🔥
RIP Tony Sirico! "I like that, that's respect!" - Soprano's
RIP Tony Sirico. Resepct!
Your ads are so well made I don't skip them.
I feel like this episode had just 3min long, I love episodes like this. Great job Alex.
i swear i've never been so interested in pasta before. If you make a 1 hour vid i would literaly watch it with enjoyment😆
PASTA CUTTER DIY ! how to make :
use fishing line
mount it on one side using spring
and on the other side mount some motor that when spinning will mow the fishing line up and down + do the "cutting motion" like knife
alternative option is to make U shape arm for the fishing line / some knife/ razor with cutting edge on both sides
mount it on one side to the hinge and on the other side make a horizontal slot + motor with arm + some bolt etc so it can move the arm up and down
This is like a thriller. Can’t wait for the next episode.
Rather than making more pasta at a time to keep the humidity up, maybe you can try active humidification. They make small ultrasonic humidifiers for aquariums that can add humidity without adding heat and can be turned on and off rapidly. It should be easy to integrate into your existing control board/code and you can just pipe in the humidified air somewhere that isn't directly onto your pasta.
Having manufactured pasta for a few years, I've gotta say I'm impressed.
Alex essentially be making a Netflix docu-series
Husband here. I always enjoy when you go to the infinity, with your perfection!!!!
Keep going!....I'm the same way!
Shouldn't you place a condenser unit in the ducting?
Reason for this is remove that moisture.
If you turn it on during the first 50% of drying period it will remove moisture, in the remaining 50% turn it off, so the internal moisture can build up again for the upcoming resting phase.
It might also help adding the capability of humidifying with a ... humidifier 🤔👌
Alex, you are almost perfectly and absolutely strapped for another pandemic. You never have to worry about the stores having no pasta if you can just make the same stuff on command
Once you fully automate the process you should sell your own brand of smaller batch pasta. Maybe create your own dye so you have a unique pasta shape.
Just add the ingredients to the mixer, create an auto tipper when the dough is ready that drops into a hopper for the pasta machine so that you can process larger batches. There is a conveyor below the chopper that leads around the parameter of your shops ceiling, inside square ducting, with different zones of heating, circulation and resting, before the dried pasta drops off into large bins.
And you finally got the Cutter!!!
The border between engineering and cooking has never been so blurred.
Also it reminds me of the Stuff made here videos. Now that's a collab I'd watch!
Last famous words, "What can go wrong"!! I woud love to see some kind of comparison to commercial pasta dryers you can get.
Is it time for another collab with This Old Tony?! A massively overbuilt machined pasta cutting attachment seems right up his alley!
This is so fun to watch! I'm learning a lot and it's just fascinating
My favorite series from Alex ever!
that was the fastest 11 minutes of my life. you're a magician. pls never stop doing what you do.
You ALWAYS improve my mood. Thanks Alex
This series is fun to watch. Idea for your next series... cured meats? Maybe you can travel to Parma where they make Prosciutto and Calabria for Soppressata and 'Nduja, and then build your own curing machine from a wine cooler with added functionality to control humidity. 😀
This is a very similar idea as my diesseration that I just completed for me Aerospace Engineering degree! Using Arduino and relays to work in a sequencing matter for an aircraft landing rig, so cool to see you do this Alex!
My most anticipated series to date!
after this series is done, I would love to see you go back to all of the skills you've learned over the years to see if you still remember how to do them. think it would be a cool one off video.
at 0:54 it's the mafia guy from the Sopranos’ Paulie ‘ Gualtieri, actor Tony Sirico who passed away today at 79, nice tribute!
This is absolutely epic. I Love Arduino programming but this is taking it to the next practical level. Absolutely fantastic. Alex next video please show us the humidity sensor and the temperature sensor location and the type of sensor used. I think you may have a problem there.
I am weirdly invested in watching this guy dedicate his life to making something sold cheaply in stores everywhere on the planet by the millions of tons.
03:36 The moment he is blessed by the Omnissiah
“It’s really painful
And tedious what I’m doing at the moment.” I cracked up laughing when I heard this. I was watching this while knitting on 1mm wooden needles and was cursing my yarn for splitting just as you were cursing! I feel your pain!
Finally figured out the watch!! Seiko srpg, now im gonna have to buy one. Thanks a lot😂 Add to my collection of watches from some of my favorite people I love to watch😁😁
Absolute mad lad he’s done it, good job Alex!!
Tot may be able to help. And I would really like another collaboration between the two of you. The pasta roller was so much fun to watch.
I feel like for the cutter you should reach out to this old tony again. he helped you with pasta before so to continue the theme and to get a high fidelity cutter suited to your machine i feel like thats the best call. plus id love to see another colab
Alex, loving all of this but it DOES bring up the question: Without electric fans and instruments measuring humidity and the ability to have "rest periods" or not....how did all those Italian grandmas over the ages manage to make dry pasta anyhow? What is, in effect, the "analog" real world equivalent of all of your wonderful tech?
Another commenter explained this, they have a dry cellar, during dry months, they would lay the pasta in big tables in the cellar, cover them, and ventilate the room every other day, after 10 to 15 days they would have a ton of dried pasta, enough to last all the rainy months.
You can also watch the last video, where he describes the town in Italy that had intervals of dry and moist air move through the town. They had a natural process to make it possible.
They would most often buy it, just like they buy bread instead of making it. When my Italian grandmother dried pasta, it just got hung up on coat hangers and dowels or whatever. It was kept inside during summer to dry slowly. Maybe there was a fan. It's been a long time.
@@gregmuon bread is pretty easy to make tbh. It used to be a thing that anyone could do. Sourdough of course, since that's how it was made for ages
@@juliaf_ True, it's just not the tradition in Italy, at least not the part I'm familiar with, maybe somewhere. You buy bread from the baker. Kinda the same with pasta. Pasta fresca is made at home, but pasta secca is purchased. I think if you go back a few hundred years, communal ovens were common, which I suppose is in between using a bakery and baking at home.
pastacutter should be easy, in fact, its really cool, that the whole thing isnt too difficult to make, but i wonder if it wouldnt make more sense to build the dryer from scratch? like you could use heated beds from 3d printers as your source of heat (i dont know how responsive the machine has to be though, a print bed keeps heat for a pretty long time) - you could even control the thing completely with g-code!
Go on and create a company and sell those things. Home roasting coffee is also a slowly growing business. A couple of years, no one even considered this and now there are plenty of mid to high class home roasting machines. And i see some similarities between home roasting and home drying of pasta. Go for it!
A total nutter. So happy I found you all those years ago and feel I am part of your journey.
Love your content man.
Could you make a video about garlic and/or timing of roasting stuff. I feel like i could learn a lot from your approach and i still struggle with the basics, time.
While having an automatic cutter is a desirable goal… I think rather than just adding “more pasta” to the dryer, I think you could achieve a similar goal by just adding an additional source of moisture. You can start with a moistened sponge. It should dry more slowly than the wet tissues.
0:53 Paulie 😢 R.I.P. Tony Sirico
The first time I saw you cutting the pasta, I thought that can be automated! XD
It's not lazy, it's efficient!
Alex: "What could possible go wrong”
Han Solo: “I have a bad feeling about this...”
Amazing serie so far Alex!!🤩
Alex, dear French cousin, I feel like at this point you deserve Italian citizenship, if I was the president I will gladly make you Italian honoris causa for the love and passion you demonstrate towards Italian cuisine
True engineer. Getting tired of repeating a task so building a system to repeat the task for you, but the building of the system will certainly be more difficult than the original task.
Alex is the best example of trying to fix a 6min manual task with a 6h (or days) of engineering