Giada De Laurentiis Is Releasing Her Own Line of Pasta and We Got the First Look

Few things go together better than Giada De Laurentiis and pasta (her recipe for Lemon Spaghetti with Shrimp has a particularly special place in my heart). And while the chef, cookbook author, and television personality has already cemented herself as an expert in Italian home cooking, her latest venture is putting her own brand name on an essential Italian pantry staple.

In an announcement at this week’s Fancy Food Show in NYC, De Laurentiis shared that Giadzy, her personally-curated Italian lifestyle and shopping platform, Giadzy is launching its first-ever in-house products: a line of artisan organic pastas, all made in Italy. Here’s everything we know.

The initial release includes eight unique shapes all hand-crafted in Abruzzo, in central Italy:

• Nodi Marini
• Bucatini
• Taccole
• Pappardelle
• Paccheri
• Bucatini Lunghi
• Manfredi Lunghi
• Spaghetti Chitarra

“When we started thinking about making our own products at Giadzy, pasta was a no-brainer. It's such a soul-satisfying food, but there's a huge disparity between the products you can find in supermarkets here and the way it's made by artisans in Italy,” De Laurentiis said. According to the announcement, it took an extensive few months of tastings, research, and meetings with the best pasta-makers in Italy before Giada and the Giadzy team “identified the key aspects of a pasta line that could carry the Giadzy name: exceptional raw ingredients, time-honored techniques, and a diversity of shapely experiences.”

“In Italy, we're very purposeful about choosing the right pasta to go with each dish. That culinary ingenuity has led to some really wonderful shapes that are beloved in their home but don't get the recognition they deserve outside of Italy," she explained to Food & Wine via email. "With Giadzy Pasta, I wanted to shine a spotlight on some of my favorite lesser-known shapes to show people how wide the world of pasta really is — and how fun it can be.”

Despite their diversity in styles, the Giadzy pasta products are composed of just two key ingredients: natural mountain spring water and organic semolina wheat. The pasta is also carefully shaped using traditional, 100-year-old bronze dies to create a classic rough texture which, the brand notes, plays a significant role in creating the perfect canvas for sauce. Finally, it's naturally air-dried for 36 hours, a step which, unlike some industrial drying methods, preserves the pasta's density to "achieve the coveted al dente bite when cooked."

To get the most out of Giadzy Pasta, De Laurentiis recommends letting the true flavor of the pasta itself shine. “Because Giadzy Pasta is so flavorful on its own, I like to pair it with fairly simple sauces so you can really appreciate the pasta as a star of the dish, rather than a supporting player,” says De Laurentiis, “I love the short curls of nodi marini with Cacio e Pepe or my Calabrian Chili Pasta, long, ruffled manfredi lunghi with Amatriciana, and wide paccheri with Marsala Mushrooms & Pistachio.”

Customers will be able to get their hands on the Giadzy Pasta starting July 23. Each 1.1-pound package retails for $10.50 exclusively at giadzy.com.