Billings, Montana – A man from Billings founded a new business that produces pasta from wheat that is farmed in Montana.
It is now being used by a number of the town’s restaurants, and a grocery shop has begun carrying it. A local businessman is responsible for producing a local good.
“There’s all this texture on the dough,” said Henry Kennah about the pasta coming out of the machine. “This is like super important. This is going to cling on all the sauce.”
The owner and operator of Yellowstone Pasta is Kennah.
He produces 15 distinct varieties of pasta.
“This is as close as you get to something manufactured in Italy,” Kennah said.
In his Italian pasta maker, which he purchased from a trader in San Francisco, Kennah utilizes two ingredients.
“A hundred percent durham semolina, three to one ratio,” Kennah said about the ingredients of semolina and water. “It’s kind of like wet sand.”
The machine compresses it into pasta while maintaining the loose consistency.
When compared to hand rolling the pasta, which he had to do in his job as a chef—a job he enjoyed—Kennah believes this is straightforward.
“There’s birthdays and anniversaries, all sorts of celebrations, business deals and you just get to be a sliver of that in someone’s life,” Kennah said about the rewards of working as a chef.
The chef’s schedule has made life difficult for his family, but he is still able to participate in the buzz of restaurants thanks to this pasta company.
He recognized an opportunity to use Great Falls-made flour to make fresh pasta.
Before his most recent triumphs, Kennah had been selling pasta at the farmers market for a number of years.
“Spaghetti is the number one pasta shape in the world,” Kennah said. “It’s so versatile.”
“We still do Italian stuff, butn ow we do a little noodle bowls and some some Asian foods with his pasta,” said Carl Kurokawa,Juliano’sowner and chef.
Kurokawa claims that this is the freshest spaghetti he has been able to use in Billings, but he frequently modifies his menu.
“It’s from Montana, Kurokawa said. “It’s grown here.”
Semolina flour, according to Kurokawa, gives the pasta its stability.
In the past month, Yellowstone Pasta became available at Town & Country Foods.
There are currently four types available, and according to store manager Wade Anderson, business has been brisk.
He adds there’s a chance the spaghetti will eventually be offered for sale at additional Town & Country locations in Montana.
“It’s pretty cool to see them on the shelves,” Kennah said.
Although Kennah is full of ideas, he does not want to expand his business too rapidly.
“So I just don’t have the expectations like that for the future,” he said. “We’ll see where it goes.”
