First, temperature dynamics and being able to reliably determine doneness by time. Boiling water is nature's thermal measuring stick, and if your water is dropping to 150 it's a Problem. This is especially the case if you like to let the water 'coast' heat-off so that your pasta doesn't burn to the bottom of the pan during an unattended rolling boil.
Second, clumping. You want the ability to freely stir and get water between pieces of pasta, or if the heat is on for the boiling bubbles to stir, in order to avoid the pasta sticking together.
Third, use 80% less water and you only get a 5x higher concentration of starch. I don't have measurements in front of me but I suspect this simply isn't starchy enough to take a tiny portion of that water and use it as an effective emulsifier. The article pins 1% starch as a threshold of effect, and I doubt I'm losing 0.2% of pasta weight when cooking to al dente.
Note: This is all for dried durum wheat-flour pasta, the generic industrial 'macaroni' of American agribusiness. Egg pasta is a very different product, with different cooking characteristics, that happens to share the name. Durum semolina pasta, whole-wheat pasta, gluten-free "pasta", rice pasta... no guarantees that this is applicable.
Correction: To attain 1% of 5kg of water, I need 50g of starch. In 500g of pasta, there's no way in hell I'm losing fully 10% of the weight of the pasta. If I cut the water to pasta ratio by 80%, I would still need to lose 2% of the weight of the pasta, and I don't think that's happening.
Second, clumping. You want the ability to freely stir and get water between pieces of pasta, or if the heat is on for the boiling bubbles to stir, in order to avoid the pasta sticking together.
Third, use 80% less water and you only get a 5x higher concentration of starch. I don't have measurements in front of me but I suspect this simply isn't starchy enough to take a tiny portion of that water and use it as an effective emulsifier. The article pins 1% starch as a threshold of effect, and I doubt I'm losing 0.2% of pasta weight when cooking to al dente.
Note: This is all for dried durum wheat-flour pasta, the generic industrial 'macaroni' of American agribusiness. Egg pasta is a very different product, with different cooking characteristics, that happens to share the name. Durum semolina pasta, whole-wheat pasta, gluten-free "pasta", rice pasta... no guarantees that this is applicable.