Skip to the dough cards
Board & Pin
Whole Wheat Trofie, Rolled Between the Palms
By The Dough Table26 Oct 2026

Short & Stamped · Core

Whole Wheat Trofie, Rolled Between the Palms

全麦 trofie，在掌心里搓成

Six millimetres of rope, torn into short lengths, rolled off the palm into a twisted spindle 35 mm long — the only shape on the site made entirely by rolling rather than pressing or cutting.

Flours
Stone-ground whole wheat (integrale)
Egg
Water only, no egg
Water
55%
Sheet
—
Form
35 mm
Drying
Flat on a tray · 24h
Work
60 min + 30 min rest
Serves
5

1The ratio

portions
Whole Wheat Trofie, Rolled Between the Palms — 5 portions
Flourgbaker’s %
Stone-ground whole wheat (integrale)30075%
Durum semolina, rimacinata10025%
Eggno egg55%
water22055%
salt41%
Dough weight624 g55% Water

Per portion ≈ 125 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 35 mm, Flat on a tray.

Sauce for this

Pesto Genovese, unmixed

热那亚青酱（石臼版）

Pesto Genovese is uncooked and therefore has no starch of its own. Trofie shed enough starch into a small pot of water to make the pesto cling, which is why this pairing is Ligurian rather than accidental.

Holds 0% herb

Flour

  • 60 g basil leaves, no stems, dry
  • 30 g pine nuts
  • 2 garlic cloves, 8 g coarse salt
  • 60 g parmigiano, 20 g pecorino
  • 120 ml extra virgin olive oil, added in a thin stream

Method

  1. Pound the garlic with the salt to a paste in a marble mortar.
  2. Add the basil in three additions, pounding and turning, never grinding.
  3. Add the pine nuts and pound again, then the cheeses.
  4. Loosen with the oil in a thin stream, stirring, not pounding.

A blade bruises basil and the pesto goes black in an hour. A mortar tears it and the colour holds for three days under a film of oil.

A 55% dough that is barely workable

Whole wheat at 300 g and semolina at 100 g against 220 g of water is 55% hydration, which produces a dough that sticks to your palm for the first ten minutes of shaping and then stops. That window is real and it is short: work the whole batch inside twenty minutes of taking it out of the rest.

The semolina is there to keep the surface from becoming tacky. Without it, a 100% whole wheat trofie dough at 55% cannot be rolled off the palm at all — the rope simply smears.

Tear, do not cut

Roll a 6 mm rope, then tear it into 35 mm lengths with your fingers. Tearing leaves a slightly tapered end that catches the palm during rolling and produces a spindle with a pointed tip at each end — which is what gives trofie their shape.

Cut ends are blunt and roll into cylinders. This is one of the few shapes where the difference is visible on the plate.

The palm roll

Put a length in the centre of your left palm, cover it with the heel of your right palm, and roll downward once, firmly, letting the piece run out from under your hand. One stroke, not two, or it turns into a rope again.

Aim for 35 mm long and about 8 mm at the thickest point of the twist. They should look slightly irregular; perfectly uniform trofie were made by a machine and behave like it in the pot.

Drying and the pesto problem

Dry 24 hours on a cloth. Trofie are thin and dry fast, but the twist traps moisture in its centre, so do not shorten this to 12 hours even though the pieces feel dry.

Whole wheat and pesto is a deliberate pairing of two strong flavours. Boil the trofie in only 1.2 litres of water — the extra starch that builds up is the only thing that makes a raw, uncooked pesto cling to a whole wheat noodle.

Drying

  1. Tray on a cloth, 1 cm apart, twists lying flat.
  2. Dry 24 hours; the twist holds water in its centre even when the surface feels dry.
  3. Freeze at 12 hours for better texture if you plan to keep them over three weeks.
  4. Whole wheat trofie darken slightly as they dry; that is the bran, not scorching.

Keeping Two weeks in paper, four months frozen. Whole wheat goes stale faster than semolina, and this shape carries both — so the freezer is the better home for anything beyond a fortnight.

When it goes wrong

Rope smears instead of rolling
Because Dough too wet, or no semolina in the blend.
Do this Keep 100 g of semolina in the mix and 55% hydration exactly. A 100% whole wheat version of this dough cannot be palm-rolled.
Trofie unroll in the pot
Because Two strokes instead of one, or cut ends instead of torn ends.
Do this One firm downward stroke, and tear the lengths rather than cutting them.
Pesto sits on top of the pasta
Because Boiled in too much water, so there is no starch to bind it.
Do this 1.2 litres for 400 g of flour. Add 40 ml of the cooking water to the pesto before tossing.

Also on the bench