Built in 2012, the Barilla Group’s high-efficiency sauce plant in Rubbiano di Solignano, Italy, is one of the largest in the world, capable of cooking up 60,000 tons of tomato and pesto sauces each year. On the menu today: spicy pesto Calabrese made from giant bins of red peppers, onions, chili peppers, salt, and sugar, along with pecorino, ricotta, and Grana Padano cheese. Founded in 1877 as a bread and pasta shop in Parma, Italy, the family-owned Barilla is now one of the largest Italian food companies in the world, selling its pasta and sauces in more than one hundred countries. Pasta sauce was one of the early foods to make the transition from homemade to mass produced in a factory in the 1930s, turning a regional dish into an international staple.
