Anyone here using a Professional Extruder?

Hi –

I spend most of my workday making pasta from scratch in a fine dining restaurant. I make a lot of pasta – usually around a thousand portions every week. I've used extruders in the past, but not in a volume capacity – the ones I've used in professional kitchens were all pretty small, barely larger than something you'd see in a home setting. We recently purchased a larger Extruder from Italy and I really like it, but I have a some questions for anyone who extrudes large quantities:

1. Do you generally use the machine to mix the semolina and water? Mine does a really nice job, but there's always a 10-15 minute period of time where I'm not extruding if I only mix in the extruder. As soon as I finish a batch and the machine is empty, it takes six minutes to mix, and another 6-10 minutes to rest and hydrate. I've been using a Hobart mixer to make a batch while I'm extruding, not sure if that's recommended but I need to not have half my time waiting for dough to mix/hydrate.
2. Does anyone use any different flour besides straight semolina? The manufacturer recommends to only use semolina, but the Instruction Manual that came with the machine has recipes that use 00, durum and semolina flour, among others. Someone at work suggested using a bit of durum flour mixed into the coarse semolina, not sure if that would be a good idea or not, and I think the hydration would change as well.
3. Does anyone use egg? I usually separate up to 10-12 cases of eggs every week, not looking to do any more necessarily, but I was wondering how it works in an extruder. Again, the recipe book has some recipes, but the manufacturer says it's a bad idea. Some Italian guy on this sub was screaming at me when I made reference to using egg in one of my comments a few months ago. I could literally feel the volume through my computer from the other side of the planet as he berated me for even suggesting making such a sacrilegious query. He said that I'm probably the type of idiot that likes pineapple on pizza (I do, actually) and that I probably break my spaghetti in half before cooking it (I do not). Curious as to what other professionals do. My die gets pretty hot, not sure how egg would be coming out when it's running hot.
4. Does everyone think that 30% is the optimal hydration? It's pretty humid in my region (upper US Midwest), and I've been going 28-29%. If I'm running the extruder in the morning before anyone else is there, I use more water, especially if the Dish Machine isn't running and steaming the place up.
5. What are some good "add-ins" to try? Spinach is at the top of my list, not sure what other ones I should look at. I'm not planning on doing squid ink – that sounds gross to me since I've never cared for the stuff personally. I assume if I add something that I'll need to have a separate water and not use the pasta cooker that we use to cook the other five or six "plain" pastas.
6. Is it just me, or does one of the Rigatoni coming out of the die always "split" after the machine has been running for a little while? And how the hell do I fix that? I learned pretty fast there's no easy way to clean a die after it's been recently used: I actually soak mine in water and when I use it next time, it just pushes out the old dough – sounds gross, but the guy who did the demo for me said that's the best way to do it. He also suggested boiling the die for a few minutes when the rigatoni splits, that there's a piece of dry pasta stuck in there causing the split. Good to know, but when I'm trying to do a couple hundred portions to get through a weekend…….I need to do it NOW, not tomorrow. I wanted to look at getting a Bucatini die, but not until I can figure out the rigatoni first. A lot of those dies look really cool, but I have a feeling they're not all as easy to make as one would think.
7. What's the best way to store the finished product? Currently, I put the pasta on sheet pans at room temperature overnight, then in containers the following morning, and then those go into the walk-in. Not sure if that's the best way to store them or not. And how long is that pasta going to be OK to use? I've made batches and tried them every day, and the only thing I noticed is that it needs to be cooked a little longer the longer it's around.
8. As far as the actual semolina goes, what's the best option? Is one certain brand better than everyone else? I don't necessarily care as much about the cost as I do the Quality. My thought process is that someone milling the product locally will be better than someone milling it on the other side of the continent. I've been using stuff milled locally and it seems to be working well.

For reference, I'm using this machine and it is not water-cooled. The recommended capacity in the hopper is 2,500 grams of semolina plus the water. When I'm extruding, I typically do about eight batches in a row, around 4,000 of semolina in almost all cases, the first in the extruder itself and then the rest larger batches in the Hobart with the paddle.

If any of you professionals out there have any helpful comments or suggestions, I sure would love to hear them. I feel like I'm good when it comes to laminated and stuffed products, but not so much extruding……..yet.

Thanks very much for your time!