How We Formulate High-Protein Pasta Without Wheat or Maida
Kushagra Didwania
Co-Founder & Head of Operations, Zeovus Food
Conventional wheat pasta delivers around 12g of protein per 100g. Our Chickpea & Soybean Spaghetti delivers over 18g — without a single gram of wheat, maida, or refined flour. Here is how we do it.
Why Move Away from Wheat?
Wheat and maida are the workhorses of traditional pasta manufacturing because they contain gluten — a protein network that gives pasta its elasticity and its ability to hold together during extrusion and cooking. The problem: gluten is the very reason so many of our target consumers cannot eat conventional pasta. Beyond coeliac disease, a large and growing segment of buyers — particularly in functional food, sports nutrition, and speciality diet categories — actively want a higher-protein, lower-glycaemic-index carbohydrate base.
The question our R&D team set out to answer was: how do you build a pasta that cooks, holds texture, and eats like a good spaghetti, with no gluten, and with nearly 50% more protein per serving?
The Ingredient Architecture
Primary Proteins: Chickpea Flour + Soy Protein Isolate
Chickpea flour is our base. It carries approximately 20–22g of protein per 100g of raw flour, a meaningful fibre load (around 12g), and a mild, neutral flavour profile that does not overpower the final product. Critically, chickpea flour produces a dough that can be extruded — it has enough starch to bind when hydrated under controlled moisture conditions.
To push the protein content further and achieve a complete amino acid profile, we blend in soy protein isolate (SPI). SPI is one of the most protein-dense ingredients available to food formulators — typically 90%+ protein — and it fills the lysine and methionine gaps that legume flours can leave.
Binding: Replacing Gluten's Role
Without gluten, the dough needs a structural network. We use a combination of xanthan gum at very low levels and a controlled pre-gelatinisation step applied to a small fraction of the chickpea flour. The pre-gelatinised fraction acts as a natural binder — its starch granules swell and rupture under heat, then set on cooling to create the cohesion that gluten would otherwise provide.
Texture Management: Extrusion Parameters
Gluten-free doughs behave very differently in an extruder compared to wheat. They are more sensitive to die temperature, screw speed, and moisture content. Too much heat and the product puffs and cracks; too little and it is dense and chalky. Our team runs a series of parameter optimisation trials for every new formulation, mapping the extrusion envelope — the range of screw speed, barrel temperature, and feed moisture within which the product meets the target texture profile.
How Is Zeovus Pasta Made Without Wheat?
The production process for our high-protein pasta follows these key stages:
Flour blending — Chickpea flour, SPI, and minor ingredients are blended in a ribbon mixer to a homogenous dry mix.
Hydration and kneading — Water is introduced at a controlled rate under vacuum to prevent air incorporation, which would cause surface cracking.
Cold extrusion — The dough is extruded through bronze dies at low temperature to preserve the protein structure and produce the characteristic rough surface texture that holds sauce.
Drying — The extruded strands are dried on a slow, low-temperature curve (typically 55–65°C over several hours) to prevent case hardening while achieving a final moisture of below 12%.
QC and packaging — Every batch passes through our ZQA framework before packing, including protein verification by Kjeldahl method.
The Final Nutritional Profile
Per 100g dry:
- Protein: 18.5g
- Total Carbohydrate: 58g
- Dietary Fibre: 6.2g
- Total Fat: 3.1g
- Energy: ~340 kcal
- Sodium: <80mg
This profile qualifies the product as a source of protein under FSSAI labelling regulations and under EU Regulation 1924/2006 — making it suitable for protein-claim packaging for private label buyers.
Want to Co-Develop Your Own High-Protein Pasta?
Our R&D team can build formulations to your target nutrition brief — different protein sources, different textures, different fibre levels. Start the conversation on our Formulation page or submit an enquiry on Working Together.