About Our Kitchen
Our Kitchen is Your Kitchen
Welcome to our kitchen! We are grateful you found us and anxious for you to see what has made us the favorite local source of handmade pastas since 1977. We are a small family-owned shop located in the heart of Tontitown, Arkansas. In case you haven't sensed it yet, we are passionate about our gourmet pasta, still made in the old-world tradition with the highest quality ingredients. Now we are offering our handcrafted pastas all around the world through our online store. If you haven't tried it yet, you'll be pleasantly surprised with how amazing pasta should taste!
Pozza’s Pasta opened its doors over 40 years ago and has been a long-time local favorite. Our story is rich in Italian heritage and old-world traditions that take us back to the cucinas (kitchens) of our Italian ancestors. Their pioneering spirit and desire for a better life brought them to settle Tontitown, Arkansas. Here, they thrived by doing what they knew best – farming and cooking. The rich Italian traditions of using fresh, natural ingredients grown and harvested from the land complemented our ancestor’s centuries-old skills of creating delicious meals in the kitchen.
Foremost among these traditional meals was the art of making pasta.
It’s part art, part craftsmanship, and part tradition that has been taught and handed down through our Italian families for centuries and largely removed from our society with mass-produced pasta on industrial equipment. But we’re delighted that each Pozza’s Artisan Handcrafted Italian Pasta product still maintains the genuine Italian pasta making tradition. The result? Not surprisingly, some of the world's best tasting gourmet pasta!
Preserving Tradition For Mouthwatering Results
What’s the difference between commercial pasta and artisan pasta? It’s all in the process employed, which lead to very distinct and different flavors.
The Ingredients
Pozza’s Artisan Handcrafted Italian Pasta is handmade daily by us in small batches, using locally sourced fresh eggs and a specially milled unbleached flour sourced from high-quality American farms that create the perfect texture in a pasta - not too hard, not too soft. We have perfecting dough kneading and do it minimally to achieve the perfect consistency. The pasta dough is then hand pressed over and again into sheets until it forms into the perfect thickness for our specialty noodles. Pozza's has no added salt, oils, preservatives, chemicals or additives. Just natural fresh ingredients, made in the old style. The Pasta Dies (Extruders)
As pasta artisans, we shape and form our fresh pasta dough using traditional bronze die cuts, which create a distinct porous texture on the pasta, far different than commercially made noodles. This texturing allows the pasta to retain more sauce beautifully, leading to a robust, flavorful experience. Commercially produced pasta is extruded and shaped through plastic Teflon dies which create a smooth surface pasta that releases most of its starch into the water and doesn’t absorb the sauce.
The Drying Process
Just like our Italian ancestors, we slowly air dry our pasta at low temperatures on wooden racks, not overly-dried with microwaves as in commercial processing. This creates a perfect outer crust on the surface of the pasta. The result is a full-flavored pasta because the integrity of the wheat and fresh ingredients have been preserved, naturally! Unlike commercially produced pastas, no chemicals or high-heat processes are used to speed up the drying time.
What’s in a Dish?
At Pozza's, we are passionate about making pasta an extraordinary eating experience and here’s why – the kitchen is the gathering spot for families and friends alike, and for good reason. It’s where stories are told, hearts meld, and memories are created – all around a flavorful dish of pasta. We are delighted to share the bold, beautiful flavors of true old-world Italy with you through our line of Pozza’s Artisan Handcrafted Italian Pastas. We hope you enjoy eating our pasta as much as we enjoy making it!
Welcome to our kitchen and buon appetit!
Lucius and Alison Mhoon
Owners, Pozza's Pasta
