The savory colomba with peas and mortadella is a delicious rustic loaf that’s easy to make, perfect as an Easter appetizer or for an Easter Monday picnic. A very simple recipe made simply by mixing all the ingredients in a bowl with a spatula—no stand mixer or special equipment—and it will give you an extremely soft brioche, full of flavor, which you can prepare instead of or in addition to classic Easter treats like casatiello, the tortano, torta pasqualina or savory babà. We used as a base the savory plumcake with mortadella and peas recipe that we’ve made for many years and that has always been very satisfying. It is a dough that’s very easy to prepare by hand and doesn’t require much handling. Just mix all the ingredients and when well combined pour everything into the mold. In just over an hour it will have risen enough to be baked and you’ll get an amazing savory colomba that will delight everyone! For the filling we used peas and mortadella—a classic combo—but you can obviously fill this colomba in many ways using the vegetables, cheeses and cured meats you prefer.
The preparation is very simple: mix the flour with the eggs, soft butter, the yeast dissolved in warm milk, salt, pepper and nutmeg in a bowl. Add the peas, mortadella and grated Parmesan to the dough and incorporate them quickly. Pour the dough into a colomba mold and let it rise for about an hour or until it has doubled in volume. Bake in a preheated oven at 356°F for about 40 minutes.
This savory colomba with peas and mortadella is certainly perfect as an appetizer for the Easter table, ideal for the Easter Monday picnic, but it’s great to enjoy any time of year, also because this very soft, minimally worked dough can be baked in a regular cake pan, a loaf pan, a bundt pan or even muffin tins. Save the savory colomba recipe and try it as soon as you can!
Also discover:
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very inexpensive
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 5 Minutes
- Cooking time: 40 Minutes
- Portions: 10
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Easter, Spring
Ingredients to make the Savory Colomba
- 4 cups type 0 flour (or all-purpose flour)
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup milk (warm (about 250 ml))
- 7 tbsp butter (soft, at room temperature (about 100 g))
- 1.5 tsp fresh yeast (about 15 g (or about 1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast equivalent))
- nutmeg
- salt
- pepper
- 2 cups peas (about 300 g)
- 7 oz mortadella with pistachios (about 200 g)
- 1 cup grated Parmesan (about 100 g)
Tools to make the Savory Colomba
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Spatula
- 1 Oven
- 1 Mold
Steps to make the Savory Colomba
Start preparing the savory colomba with peas and mortadella by first cooking the peas in salted boiling water for 5-6 minutes. Drain and let them cool well.
Dice the mortadella.
Prepare the dough by first dissolving the fresh yeast in the warm milk.
Pour the flour into a bowl and add the eggs, the soft butter at room temperature, and the yeast dissolved in the milk.
Mix all the ingredients until they combine and you obtain a homogeneous, soft dough. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg and mix.
Fold the peas, the mortadella and the grated Parmesan into the dough and mix briefly.
Pour the dough into a colomba mold with a capacity of about 3 cups (750 ml) and let it rise covered for at least one hour or until it has doubled in volume.
Bake the savory colomba in a preheated oven at 356°F for about 40 minutes, always doing the toothpick test to make sure the colomba is cooked through and not damp inside.
Remove the savory colomba with peas and mortadella from the oven, let it cool until slightly warm or completely, and serve.
Simo and Cicci recommend
You can keep the savory colomba for up to 4-5 days at room temperature in a sealed food bag or airtight container, or you can freeze it.
If you don’t have a colomba mold you can use the same dough to make a savory cake, a bundt, a loaf cake or, alternatively, muffins.
You can enrich the base of this savory colomba with other ingredients or substitute them, for example using zucchini, mushrooms, asparagus, olives, cooked ham, speck, salami, or cheeses such as provolone, smoked provola, or emmental.
