Bigoli substitute

Best substitute

Whole-Wheat Spaghetti (thick, bronze cut if possible)

Use the same amount by weight as the bigoli you are replacing

Best for bigoli in salsa

Different texture

Whole-wheat spaghetti is the best substitute, because it matches both the thickness and the faintly nutty, slightly bitter flavour of traditional bigoli. Bucatini is the next best choice and is easier to find, since it is the right diameter and its bronze-cut surface grips sauce well. Whatever you use, the point of bigoli is the rough, porous surface that holds a loose sauce like the anchovy and onion bigoli in salsa, so buy pasta labelled bronze cut or trafilata al bronzo and finish it in the pan with a splash of pasta water.

Other bigoli substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Bucatini
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
The right thickness, roughly the diameter of bigoli, and almost always bronze cut so the surface is properly rough.
What changes
The difference is the hole down the middle, which fills with sauce and makes each strand lighter and springier than solid bigoli. Made from white semolina, so you lose the wholemeal flavour.
Best for
bigoli in salsa, duck or goose ragu, sauces with rendered fat or oil
Bucatini takes longer than spaghetti, usually nine to eleven minutes, and it cooks unevenly if the pan is crowded. Use a wide pot and plenty of water.
3Spaghettoni or Thick Spaghetti (No. 12 and up)
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
Solid and properly chunky, so the mouthfeel is the closest to bigoli of any easily bought shape.
What changes
What you do not get is the porous surface, especially with cheap Teflon-extruded pasta, which comes out slick and lets a thin anchovy sauce slide off into a puddle at the bottom of the bowl.
Best for
bigoli in salsa, rich ragu, cacio e pepe style sauces
Look for bronze cut on the packet. A slick strand can be rescued by tossing it in the pan over heat with a ladle of starchy pasta water until the sauce visibly grabs on.
4Pici or Fresh Thick Hand-Rolled Pasta
Close match
Use the same amount by weight
Pici are the Tuscan hand-rolled thick strands, and if you can find them they give you the best texture match: dense, chewy, irregular and thoroughly absorbent.
What changes
They are shorter than bigoli and slightly gummier, and they are almost as hard to find as bigoli itself, which limits how useful this option is.
Best for
anchovy and onion sauces, garlic and oil, meat ragu
Fresh pasta cooks in three to five minutes and needs a lighter hand with pasta water because it is already soft. Any thick fresh egg-free strand works the same way.
5Whole-Wheat Linguine or Whole-Wheat Fettuccine
Different texture
Use the same amount by weight
Right flavour, wrong cross-section.
What changes
A flat ribbon coats differently from a round strand, holding sauce on its faces rather than around its circumference, so bigoli in salsa made with linguine tastes correct but eats slicker and slides apart on the fork more easily.
Best for
bigoli in salsa, sardine and breadcrumb sauces
A reasonable compromise if your shop stocks whole-wheat pasta only in ribbons. Toss hard in the pan so the ribbons do not stick to each other in sheets.
6Udon Noodles (least-bad emergency option)
Different taste
Use the same amount by cooked weight
Being honest: this is not an Italian substitute and it will not taste traditional.
What changes
What it does give you is the correct thick, chewy, round strand, and fresh or frozen udon is easier to buy in many places than bigoli. Udon is made from soft wheat and salted dough, so it is springier, blander and slightly slippery, and the sauce will not cling as well.
Best for
a thick-strand approximation when nothing else is available
Rinse the surface starch off, then finish the noodles in the anchovy and onion sauce with a little pasta water. Do not salt the sauce until you have tasted it, since udon dough already contains salt.

What is Bigoli?

Bigoli is Bigoli, also spelled bigoi in Venetian dialect, are long, thick, extruded strands of pasta from the Veneto, traditionally pushed through a hand press called a bigolaro that leaves the surface unusually rough and porous.

Cooking tips

Bigoli in salsa is a sauce with almost nothing in it, just onions cooked down slowly in oil or butter with salt-packed anchovies melted into them, so the pasta's surface is doing half the work of the dish. That is why bronze cut matters more here than the exact shape you buy.
Never drain a substitute strand and then pour sauce over it. Pull the pasta a minute early, move it into the pan of onions with tongs, add a ladle of the starchy cooking water, and toss over medium heat for a minute until the liquid turns glossy and coats the strands.
If your substitute is smooth white pasta, cook it in slightly less water than usual. The cooking water ends up more concentrated in starch, which is the cheapest way to make a slick strand behave like a rough one.
Whole-wheat and bronze-cut pastas shed more starch and go from firm to soft faster than glossy supermarket spaghetti. Start tasting three minutes before the box time says you should.
Bigoli traditionally goes with strongly savoury sauces built on anchovy, sardine, duck or goose, not with tomato-heavy sauces. Whichever strand you substitute, hold the cheese: bigoli in salsa is served without grated Parmesan in the Veneto, because the anchovy is already supplying the salt and savour.

Frequently asked questions

Is bigoli just thick spaghetti?

Close, but not identical. Bigoli is thicker than standard spaghetti, roughly three millimetres, and the traditional difference is how it is made: extruded through a bigolaro press, which leaves a coarse, chalky, porous surface rather than a smooth one. Many old recipes also used wholemeal flour, and some Venetian versions include duck egg. Thick spaghetti gets you the bite; bronze-cut or whole-wheat thick spaghetti gets you the bite and the grip.

Can I use regular spaghetti for bigoli in salsa?

Yes, and plenty of people in Venice do on a weeknight. The dish still works because the sauce is mostly onion and anchovy, which cling reasonably well. Two things help: pick the thickest spaghetti on the shelf, and finish it in the pan with starchy pasta water instead of saucing it in the bowl. Standard smooth spaghetti tends to leave a slick of oil in the bottom of the dish, and the pan-tossing step is what prevents that.

Where does bigoli come from and why is it so hard to buy?

It is a Veneto speciality, strongly associated with Venice, Vicenza and Padua, and it was historically pressed at home with a bigolaro rather than made in a factory. It never became an export shape the way spaghetti and penne did, so outside Italy it is mostly a specialist import. If you have an Italian deli, ask for bigoli or bigoi by name, since it is sometimes stocked seasonally around the Christmas Eve and Good Friday meals it is traditionally eaten at.

Can I make bigoli at home without a press?

You can make a very good approximation. A stiff dough of about three parts durum wheat flour or a mix of white and wholemeal flour to one part water by weight, kneaded until smooth and rested for half an hour, can be rolled into thick strands by hand like pici. It will be irregular and slightly shorter than pressed bigoli, but the dense chew and the rough surface are both there. A stand-mixer pasta extruder with the thick spaghetti die also gets remarkably close.

Does whole-wheat pasta taste too bitter for this dish?

Not in this particular case. The bitterness that people dislike in whole-wheat pasta with tomato sauce is an asset next to sweet slow-cooked onion and salty anchovy, which is exactly the pairing bigoli in salsa is built on. If it still reads too strong for you, use half whole-wheat and half white thick spaghetti in the same pot, cooking to the longer of the two times.

Related substitutes

More pasta & noodles substitutes

Bigoli substitute

Other bigoli substitutes

2Bucatini

3Spaghettoni or Thick Spaghetti (No. 12 and up)

4Pici or Fresh Thick Hand-Rolled Pasta

5Whole-Wheat Linguine or Whole-Wheat Fettuccine

6Udon Noodles (least-bad emergency option)