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Malloreddus with Saffron in the Water
By The Dough Table7 Oct 2026

Short & Stamped · Core

Malloreddus with Saffron in the Water

藏红花 malloreddus，颜色进面团

The saffron goes into the boiling water that becomes the dough, not into the sauce: a pinch of threads steeped in the 180 g of water turns the whole batch the colour of straw and gives it a hay-and-honey aroma that survives thirty-six hours of drying.

Flours
Durum semolina, rimacinata
Egg
Water only, no egg
Water
45%
Sheet
—
Form
20 mm
Drying
Flat on a tray · 36h
Work
55 min + 20 min rest
Serves
5

1The ratio

portions
Malloreddus with Saffron in the Water — 5 portions
Flourgbaker’s %
Durum semolina, rimacinata400100%
Eggno egg45%
water18045%
salt41%
Dough weight584 g45% Water

Per portion ≈ 117 g. Every ratio on this site is a baker’s percentage against the flour weight.

2The roller

Rolled by hand, not through a machine — Rope diameter 20 mm, Flat on a tray.

Sauce for this

Saffron and tomato with pancetta

藏红花番茄配培根

Saffron and tomato with pancetta is the Sardinian pairing for malloreddus, and the reason is that the sauce is thin enough to flow into the grooves while the shells stay firm enough to chew.

Holds 5% meat

Flour

  • 0.4 g saffron threads (about 25 threads)
  • 80 g pancetta, diced
  • 500 g tinned tomatoes, crushed
  • 1 onion, 1 bay leaf
  • 100 ml dry white wine
  • 60 g pecorino

Method

  1. Steep the saffron in 60 ml warm water for 15 minutes. Do not use boiling water; it kills the colour.
  2. Render the pancetta, then cook the onion in its fat until soft.
  3. Add the wine, reduce, then the tomatoes and bay. Simmer 25 minutes.
  4. Stir in the saffron water 5 minutes before the end so the colour survives.

Saffron loses half its aroma in the first ten minutes of cooking. Add it late and the dish smells of hay and honey instead of nothing.

Steeping saffron into the dough water

Crush 0.3 g of threads between your fingers into a cup, add 60 ml of water at 60 °C, and leave 20 minutes. The water should be deep orange-gold before it goes anywhere near the flour; if it is pale yellow, the saffron is old and the batch will be colourless.

Use that 60 ml plus 120 ml of plain water to reach the 180 g total. Adding the saffron directly to the flour instead leaves uneven orange streaks that dry into dark speckles.

A 14 mm rope is the target

Malloreddus are bigger than cavatelli: a 14 mm rope cut into 12 mm beads, then dragged across a ridged board — the traditional ciuliri, or any board with 4 mm grooves — with the thumb, finishing with a firm press that curls the shell.

The groove pattern is what makes the shape. A malloreddus with no ridges is just a thick bead, and it will not hold a sauce the way a ridged one does.

Thirty-six hours of drying

Malloreddus are the thickest dry shape here — 14 mm across — and they take 36 hours to dry through. Anything less and the centre stays damp; the shell looks dry while the core is still soft, and they go mouldy in the bag within ten days.

Test at 36 hours by breaking one in half. The cross-section must be uniform in colour all the way through, with no darker ring at the centre.

Cooking and the double-saffron trick

Nine minutes at a rolling boil. A 14 mm dried shell is genuinely dense, and undercooked malloreddus are unpleasant in a way that undercooked thin pasta is not.

Add a second, tiny pinch of saffron to the sauce at the end, off the heat. The saffron in the dough has been cooked for thirty-six hours of drying plus nine minutes of boiling and has lost most of its top notes; the fresh pinch puts them back.

Drying

  1. Tray them on a cloth, ridged side up, 1.5 cm apart.
  2. Dry 36 hours without turning; they are too heavy to dry evenly if disturbed.
  3. A malloreddus is dry when it is uniformly pale through a broken cross-section.
  4. Store in a paper bag or a tin; at this density they do not crush each other.

Keeping Six weeks, the longest of any shape here, because of the density and the absence of egg. They also survive travel better than anything else on the site and can be stored in a tin rather than a bag.

When it goes wrong

Mouldy after ten days
Because Dried less than 36 hours, so the core was still damp.
Do this Break one open before storing. An even cross-section is the only reliable test.
Colour faded after drying
Because Saffron added to the flour instead of steeped into the water first.
Do this Steep 20 minutes in 60 °C water. The pigment needs to be in solution before it meets the semolina.
Grooves not visible
Because Dragged on a smooth board, or pressed too lightly.
Do this Use a grooved board and press hard enough that the ridges show on the underside as well as the top.

Also on the bench