Bombaci Handmade Pasta proves that by pairing high-quality ingredients and total attention, pasta becomes its own kind of pleasure. Founders Gabriel Rossi and Annette Solis started the business in the spring of 2024 after years of working together in restaurants, from Denver, Colorado, to the Australian Outback. The husband and wife team tried many food projects at home, but pasta was the one that stuck. It offered craft, variation and endless room to learn.
Their dough starts with flour imported from Italy, which Rossi trusts for its consistency and flavor. For their stuffed pastas, they add a touch of semolina and use a generous number of egg yolks, making the dough soft but strong. The couple developed the ratio to hold fillings without weighing them down. But Bend’s dry climate forces constant adjustments. Some days require more water, some days less. The dough changes with the weather, and the makers follow its lead. Even with machines kneading their dough, Rossi and Solis finish each batch by hand.
For its stuffed pastas, Bombaci’s dough sheets are rolled out on wooden tables and folded individually into their respective shapes. Rainshadow and Godspeed eggs are a staple in the kitchen. Local ranchers and farmers, such as Well-Rooted Produce, Boundless Farmstead, Seed to Table and Pitchfork-T, regularly provide sources for fillings.
During market season, each week brings new flavors from the Sisters, NorthWest Crossing and Downtown Bend farmers markets. Off-season, flavors change about every other week. The Bombaci team never feels boxed in when it comes to flavor development: If a creamed corn and braised beef filling feels right one week, they try it.
When Bombaci added an extruder to its kitchen, a machine that pushes dough through a bronze “die” to create noodle shapes that can’t be formed by hand, it opened the door to offer pasta variations such as bucatini, rigatoni and campanelle.
“Quality is the absolute top priority; we’ve obsessed over it.” Rossi said. “We use awesome ingredients. We’ve both lost so much sleep over pasta.” Solis added, “It needs to be delicious.”
It’s quality that drives every decision in the Bombaci kitchen, down to the packaging. Rossi and Solis discovered that candy boxes help control moisture due to their hybrid cardboard and plastic composition. This allows Bombaci to deliver fresh stuffed pasta that is tender and never brittle.
Bombaci pasta is meant to inspire the home cook to explore flavor in the kitchen. Stuffed shapes ask for very little, perhaps brown butter, a bit of salt and a handful of grated cheese. Extruded shapes can welcome more, such as a meat ragu or simply vegetables cooked down in olive oil. Rossi often recommends blistered cherry tomatoes with their mushroom agnolotti: one tomato and one agnolotti per bite, a surprisingly tender forkful that balances sweetness and umami. Bombaci gives people a way to cook at home with minds open to the creative possibilities of flavor, from simple preparations to the most eclectic.
