Baked Pasta

If there's anything more comforting than boiled pasta in a sauce, it's got to be baked pasta in a sauce. The baking adds a crispy crust that is such a delicious contrast to the tender goodness of the dish. The challenge is to how to get the pasta to turn out just right.

Pasta al forno (lit. 'pasta to the oven', i.e. 'baked pasta') or timballo di pasta is a typical dish of Italian cuisine, made of (usually short) pasta covered with béchamel sauce, tomato sauce and cheese and cooked in the oven.

Baked pasta can ideally be divided in two big categories: the version with béchamel sauce was born in the Renaissance courts of the center and north, as a poorer variant of meat pies, from which probably derive very famous dishes such as lasagne al forno and Emilian cannelloni; the so-called pasta 'nfurnata or pasta 'ncasciata is instead one of the most typical dishes of Sicily (particularly of the province of Messina, in the specific of Mistretta, and of the province of Catania) and has its origins in very ancient traditions, essentially ascribable to the sumptuous timbales that Arabs introduced in Sicily during their domination dating back to the ninth century, to which, however, is due the name timballo itself.