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SMART SHOPPING: Penne

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Curious if there was any difference among the various brands of penne you find at the supermarket–from fancy imported brands to inexpensive domestic brands–we pitted eight brands against each other in a taste-off. Though fancier brands from Italy boasted traditional techniques and ingredients (such as slow kneading, mixing cold mountain spring water with hard durum semolina, and extruding the dough through traditional bronze cast dies for a coarse texture), we found they didn’t necessarily translate into better-tasting pasta. In the end, tasters gave a domestic brand, Mueller’s Penne Rigate, top honors for its "hearty," "wheaty" flavor.