Baked Pasta with Ricotta (Pasta al Forno)

Why this recipe works for endurance

90 g of carbohydrate is a real portion of a loading day, not a gesture. Carbohydrate loading means 8–12 g of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day for the 24 to 48 hours before a long event (Burke et al., 2011; Thomas, Erdman & Burke, 2016), and the modern protocol needs only one or two days with training tapered — Bussau and colleagues reached maximal muscle glycogen in trained athletes after a single day at 10 g/kg in 2002. For a 150 lb (68 kg) runner at 10 g/kg that is 680 g in a day, and one portion of this tray is 90 g of it: about an eighth of the day's target in one sitting, which is the kind of density that makes those numbers reachable without living on gels. The full arithmetic, including a worked loading day, is in our guide to carb loading the Italian way.

The dairy makes it the only dish on this site that does both jobs. After a long effort the recommendation is carbohydrate plus 20–30 g of protein within a couple of hours, because the protein does something for muscle repair that carbohydrate alone does not (Thomas, Erdman & Burke, 2016). A plain tomato pasta gives you the first half and about 15 g of protein. Here the ricotta (23 g to the tray), the mozzarella (24 g) and the Parmigiano (9 g) add 56 g on top of the 52 g that durum wheat contributes on its own, and the plate lands at 30 g — inside the recovery window with no meat in the dish at all. Both slots for this and the other endurance recipes are spelled out on the category page.

Two honest numbers: the fat and the fiber. This is not the lowest-fat plate in the category — 18 g of fat a portion, 7.2 g of it saturated, nearly all from the three cheeses. Fat and fiber both slow the stomach, which is why the dinner closest to the start line should be the plainest thing you can face: the cacio e pepe is 11 g of fat, and the spaghetti alle vongole is 12 g with 341 mg of sodium. Eat this one on the loading day, at lunch or at an early dinner, or the night after the race rather than the night before it. The fiber here, 6.1 g, is moderate and about 40% of it is the passata; if you have a nervous stomach, a smooth passata rather than crushed tomatoes is the version to make.

Where the sodium actually comes from, because it is not where people look. 747 mg a portion, and the largest single source is the teaspoon of salt in the pasta water: 388 mg, more than the mozzarella (155 mg), the Parmigiano (100 mg) and the ricotta (62 mg). Our nutrition script counts every gram of salt that goes into the pot, which is the cautious way to do it — in reality pasta absorbs only a fraction and the rest goes down the drain — so treat 747 mg as a ceiling rather than a measurement. No salt is added to the sauce at all for the same reason, and that is also why the dish is seasoned with cheese: 1 tsp of salt in 4 quarts of water is already enough to season 400 g of pasta properly, and the Dietary Guidelines ceiling of 2,300 mg a day is a day, not a plate.

Tips from our kitchen

• The shape matters more than the brand. You want a short tube with ridges — ziti, rigatoni, mezze maniche, penne rigate — because baked pasta is the one application where sauce gets inside the pasta and stays there. Smooth penne lisce sheds it, and long pasta mats together into a layer you have to cut with a knife. Bronze-cut pasta has a rougher surface and holds noticeably more sauce, which is worth the extra dollar here in a way it is not in a bowl of spaghetti.
• Buy passata, not sauce. Strained tomato purée in a carton or jar, with tomatoes as the only ingredient, is the base this is built on: nothing to cook out, no sugar, no dried herbs. If all you can find is canned crushed tomatoes they work, but they bring about 190 mg more sodium per portion and a coarser texture, and they want 25 minutes of simmering rather than 20. Jarred marinara is already seasoned and already salted — if you use it, you are making a different and saltier dish.
• Save more pasta water than you think you need. A cup and a half, and expect to use a full cup of it: half in the ricotta, half in the pot. Starchy water is what turns ricotta into a sauce and what keeps the pasta from drinking the tray dry in the oven. There is no substitute once the water is down the drain — plain hot water loosens the ricotta but will not bind it, and the difference shows up as a slightly broken, grainy surface.
• Ceramic or glass, and let it come up to room temperature if it is glass. Metal pans conduct faster and brown the bottom before the middle is hot; ceramic and glass are slower, more forgiving, and hold the heat on the table. Pyrex and similar glass should not go from the fridge straight into a 400°F oven — thermal shock is a real risk with a cold glass dish. If the tray has been refrigerated overnight, give it 20 minutes on the counter first, which also takes about 10 minutes off the bake.
• Double it and freeze the second tray unbaked. Build it in a foil pan, wrap it tight, freeze up to 3 months, then bake from frozen, covered, at 375°F (190°C) for about 60 minutes, uncover, and give it another 20 at 400°F. It is a better freezer dish unbaked than baked, because the pasta has not yet been through the oven once. For a week of this kind of cooking, our Mediterranean meal prep guide has the full Sunday plan.

Variations

• Whole-wheat ziti, for the training weeks rather than race week. The same tray made with whole-wheat pasta comes to 623 calories with 90 g of carbohydrate, 31 g of protein and 12 g of fiber instead of 6.1 — a better everyday plate and a worse pre-race one, for exactly the same reason. It also needs a little more pasta water, because whole wheat absorbs more.
• With peas, which is what a Neapolitan kitchen does in spring. A cup of frozen peas (150 g), thawed and folded in at the end of step 4, adds about 30 calories and 2 g of protein a portion and makes the tray look like food rather than carbohydrate. Spinach works the same way if you squeeze it properly dry first — wet greens are the other way to end up with a loose tray.
• For recovery with more protein, add the meat to the sauce, not the top. Half a pound of 93% lean ground beef or turkey browned before the garlic goes in takes the portion to roughly 42 g of protein and 732 calories. That is the direction the sheet-pan chicken parmesan takes much further, and if you want the carbohydrate with the protein already built in, the Sicilian tuna pasta gets to 31 g in 25 minutes on the stove.
• Smaller trays, for one person who runs. Build it in two 8x8 inch dishes or four single-portion gratin dishes and cut the bake to 22 to 25 minutes; the small ones brown more, which most people consider an improvement. This is the format worth knowing if the tray is for a training week rather than a table.
• The Sunday version, if there is an afternoon. Ragù instead of passata, cubes of provolone instead of mozzarella, hard-boiled eggs sliced into the middle layer, and a handful of fried eggplant if you are in Sicily, where the dish is called pasta 'ncasciata. The numbers on this page no longer apply to that one, and it is not a pre-race dinner by any reading, but it is the dish this recipe is a weekday translation of.

Storage & meal prep

This is a dish whose whole design is keeping, so the useful answer has two halves. Unbaked, assembled and covered tight, it holds 24 hours in the fridge — build it in the morning, bake it at night, add 15 minutes to the time and 20 minutes on the counter first if the dish is glass. That is the version to plan around the day before a long effort. Baked, it keeps 4 days covered in the fridge and is genuinely good cold or at room temperature, which is a sentence worth taking literally: a square of yesterday's pasta al forno wrapped in foil is what Southern Italians take to the beach. To reheat a portion, add a tablespoon of water, cover it with foil and give it 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C), or 2 minutes in the microwave at 70% power — the USDA asks for 165°F (74°C) in the middle of reheated leftovers, and a tray this dense takes longer than it looks to get there. It freezes 3 months either baked or unbaked, and unbaked is better: bake from frozen, covered, 60 minutes at 375°F (190°C), then uncovered 20 minutes at 400°F. What it does not survive is being reheated twice, which turns the pasta floury.