Kaslo Sourdough is pleased to share that they are the recipient of a $46,625.00 grant from the Canada – British Columbia Agri-Innovation Program which enables them to make their dream of manufacturing a sourdough spaghetti come within reach. The grant was awarded to accelerate their growth in the agri-food industry, particularly in the value-added food processing sector.
“We have been working on perfecting and prototyping our sourdough spaghetti recipe for about seven years now,” says owner-operator Silvio Lettrari. “Making a top-notch spaghetti is the sign of an expert-level pasta maker. It’s much more difficult to produce than the short noodles we’ve been producing so far, our radiatori, or rotini. This grant will take us from early prototyping to commercializing our production.”
Over the coming summer months, even with the COVID-19 pandemic requiring physical distancing, mask-wearing indoors and other safety measures, Lettrari will be in the pasta production facility helping and overseeing a small crew install the new pasta production equipment shipped in from Italy. Heading into the fall of 2020, Lettrari hopes to be making the first commercial-scale test batches of spaghetti, trying out the new drying racks, and designing new production processes for his staff.
Kaslo Sourdough’s Production Manager, Stefan Lettrari, is also looking forward to the change. “I’ll be helping my dad sort out the new production procedures. This equipment will be different from the setup we currently have for our short noodle production, so we’ll be learning a lot again. We want to make sure our staff are safe as we figure out how to run the dough through the new machines and get the spaghetti and later, other long noodles figured out.”
There have long been inquiries about when a spaghetti might be available. Heidi Lettrari, the General Manager, explains: “We’ve had requests for spaghetti basically since we first started producing our sourdough pastas. I have distinct memories of doing a demo in a grocery store, explaining our pasta and why it’s different, and the person trying a sample, saying, ‘This is great, but do you have a spaghetti?’” She laughs. “Well, soon we can say, “Yes, we do!”
Next Steps. The project to commercialize a sourdough spaghetti will be underway over the next 18 months and Kaslo Sourdough will be releasing updates and details about progress with developing the new sourdough spaghetti. For now, installing the new machinery, scaling production processes and developing a training plan are underway in a phased approach.
About Kaslo Sourdough. Kaslo Sourdough is Kootenay-based, award-winning company known for their high quality products, innovation and leadership contributions to the grocery food industry in Western Canada. They have been producing sourdough pastas since February 2012, and sourdough breads since the early 1990s. For the past eight years, Kaslo Sourdough has been producing twelve different varieties of sourdough noodles in four different short shapes: radiatori, fusilli, macaroni, rotini, and spirali. They have been recognized for their leadership, ingenuity, and contributions to the grocery industry. Most recently, in 2017 they won Product of the Year at the Vegan Expo with their hemp sourdough pasta.
Funding for this project has been provided by the Governments of Canada and British Columbia through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a federal-provincial territorial initiative. The program is delivered by the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC.
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