Where to Start with Thomas McNaughton
Thomas McNaughton is an American chef and restaurateur best known as the founder of Flour + Water, the San Francisco restaurant that became a destination for some of the best handmade pasta on the West Coast. McNaughton opened the restaurant in 2009 in the Mission District, and it quickly earned national recognition for its inventive, seasonally driven pasta dishes. He went on to open several more restaurants in San Francisco. His cookbook, Flour + Water: Pasta (2014), co-written with Paolo Lucchesi, translates his restaurant’s approach to pasta making into recipes and techniques for home cooks. McNaughton’s style blends classical Italian pasta craft with the seasonal, ingredient-driven sensibility of California cooking.
Start here
Flour + Water: Pasta
Thomas McNaughton · 288 pages · 2014 · Challenging
Themes: fresh pasta, Italian cuisine, restaurant-style, seasonal cooking, artisan pasta
The cookbook from San Francisco’s acclaimed Flour + Water restaurant, where chef Thomas McNaughton built a reputation for some of the best handmade pasta in America. This book shares his approach to pasta making with fifty seasonally organized recipes that range from approachable classics to inventive dishes that push the craft forward.
Why Start Here
This is McNaughton’s only cookbook, and it captures the philosophy that made Flour + Water famous. He treats pasta making as a creative discipline rather than a set of fixed rules. The recipes are organized by season, pairing pasta shapes with ingredients at their peak: spring asparagus caramelle with brown butter, summer corn and crescenza cappelletti, autumn pumpkin tortelloni with sage. The flavor combinations are ambitious and often surprising.
The pasta instruction itself is thorough. McNaughton covers egg doughs, semolina doughs, and specialty doughs, with detailed guidance on rolling, shaping, and filling. The photography is striking, and the step-by-step sequences for complex shapes like cappelletti and caramelle are genuinely helpful even for experienced pasta makers.
What to Expect
A substantial 288-page hardcover with restaurant-caliber recipes. Some recipes require ingredients or techniques that take real effort, and the plating style is more restaurant than home kitchen. But the pasta fundamentals are transferable to any kitchen, and the seasonal approach to pairing shapes with sauces will change how you think about what to make and when. Best suited for cooks who already feel comfortable with basic doughs and want to expand their creative range.