Thanks to the industry linked to the milling of cereals, several factories to produce “soup pasta” were built, in addition to the numerous milling plants. These factories were known as “pasta factories”.
In Apulia, there were 201 pasta factories: 30 in the Land of Otranto and 120 in the Land of Bari, which held the supremacy in the production of pasta.
The production of pasta has always been linked to the production of flour. Since the medieval age, flour has been produced in small workshops where it was handmade using essential tools, such as a kitchen chest, the rolling pin, some knives and some looms for the drying process. This activity is still considered less important than the milling art.
Around the end of the sixteenth century and during the following century, a small technological revolution took place: pasta-making evolves from an artisan activity into a partially mechanized work, thanks to the spread of simple tools. At the beginning, the screw press was used to extrude and shape, and then the manual kneading machine to work the dough.
The screw press, known as “ingegno” was used until the 1850s, when the first model of mechanical press - made of iron and bronze - made its appearance.
Starting from the last years of the nineteenth century, the production of pasta became an actual industrial activity, thanks to the first and radical technological innovation of the machines – firstly operated by steam energy and later by electricity.