I am planning on making my first batch of fresh pasta soon and have been researching all of the steps.
One of these steps is to dust a bit of flour on fresh pasta dough to make it easier to work with and to stop freshly cut noodles from sticking together when handling. In some cases I have seen people mention using cornstarch to dust their pasta instead.
What is the difference in using cornstarch vs flour to prevent fresh uncooked noodles and dough from sticking to each other? Is one better than the other?
Best Answer
To answer the precise question as stated above: wheat flour will draw more moist and get stickier than for example corn starch (i guess, because of the gluten content). So depending on what kind of noodle you're making you have to judge what to use. There are pretty dry doughs for noodles (especially the italian dry variants) where you can easily get away with regular flour.
That said, in case you have a really sticky dough: rice flour draws the least amount of moist, as far as I experienced it. I use it to dust my banneton (proving basked for bread making) and the bread will come right out of it without sticking to the banneton. Maybe you could try that as well!
However regarding my own experience with noodles: My dad uses semolina to make his dried noodles (italian style tagliatelle without egg, so again: not entirely sure if relevant). Before cutting he dusts them heavily with semolina. If he thinks they might still be a bit too sticky the dusts them again after cutting and tosses them a bit. They can be cooked right away, but most of the time they are premade to be cooked later that day. My dad rolls them up into rough nests, so they don't take as much space. Also this way he can make a huge batch and use a portion right away while drying the rest for later use. They never stick to each other and cook perfectly.