Today a savory traditional recipe: Abruzzo Easter bread. A leavened bread filled with cured meats and cheeses in the dough. Tasty, flavorful and easy to make.
From Easter when I was little I don’t have many food memories, but two are indelible in my mind: one was the huge egg my uncle gave me and the other is the Abruzzo Easter bread.
I still remember my grandmother and my mother kneading it in industrial quantities, letting it rise in the small bowls where it would be baked, all lined up like little soldiers near the fireplace and covered with a wool blanket and the ever-present yellow checked tablecloth. And then baked in the wood-fired oven we had in the kitchen — imagine the incredible aroma in the house….
Each little bowl had its own story because they didn’t use special bread or panettone molds — they used any pot that could go in the oven. My favorite was a small earthenware pot with a broken handle, not very large but a bit tall so the bread had more crumb.
I was often in charge of cutting the cured meats and cheeses to put in the dough, and I don’t even need to tell you that I ate many little pieces while preparing them! 😋
Sausage, pancetta and cheese are the main additional ingredients of this bread. Over here in Abruzzo (at least where I’m from) it can’t be missing on Easter day on the appetizer plate, and many, including my dad, even have it for breakfast with boiled eggs and a glass of red wine!
What lovely memories!!!!! So many emotions….
This Easter bread is halfway between the cheese pizza found in many Italian regions at Easter and the Neapolitan tortano.
You should use good aged sausages, pancetta not too lean but not too fatty either, and the cheese to cut into pieces should be a good fresh cow caciotta that’s been left to dry. If, like me, you can’t find it, a semi-aged cheese will do.
Now let’s see together, step by step, how to make this recipe.
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- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Medium
- Rest time: 10 Hours
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Cooking time: 40 Minutes
- Portions: 2 loaf pans
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian Regional
- Region: Abruzzo
- Seasonality: Easter
- Energy 166.59 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 11.00 (g) of which sugars 0.97 (g)
- Proteins 7.22 (g)
- Fat 10.41 (g) of which saturated 2.70 (g)of which unsaturated 3.14 (g)
- Fibers 0.36 (g)
- Sodium 275.46 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 50 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients
Below you’ll find links to some of the ingredients used
- 2 2/3 cups durum wheat semolina (re-milled)
- 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp Manitoba flour (strong flour)
- 9 oz sausage (dried/cured)
- 3.5 oz cheese (semi-aged)
- 9 oz sweet pancetta
- 3 1/2 cups grated cheese
- 5 eggs
- 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
- 5 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp water
- 1 yolk (for brushing)
Tools
Below you’ll find links to some of the tools used to make the recipe
- 1 Cutting board
- 1 Knife
- 1 Stand mixer
- 2 Loaf pans
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Plastic wrap
- 1 Brush
- 1 Scale
Let’s prepare the Easter bread together
The slightly more tedious part is cutting the sausage, pancetta and cheese into cubes of about 1/4 inch and dissolving the dry yeast in the water.
Once all the ingredients are ready we can start kneading: put the flours, the grated cheese and the well-dissolved yeast into the stand mixer’s bowl and begin to mix. While it runs, add the eggs one at a time and finally the oil, and let it mix for a couple of minutes at medium speed. You will now have a nice compact ball.
At this point add the sausage, pancetta and cheese that you previously cut into pieces and knead again for a couple more minutes.
Then transfer the dough to a work surface and knead quickly by hand to shape it into a round, then place the ball in a bowl covered with plastic wrap to let it rise. Put the bowl in the fridge for four to twelve hours (I kneaded at 9pm and took it out of the fridge at 7am).
After taking it out of the fridge let it sit at room temperature for about half an hour. Then place the dough on a work surface, divide it into two equal parts of about 900 g each and shape each into a long loaf (or the shape of the pan you decided to use). Lightly grease the pan and place the loaf inside, cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a turned-off oven for three to four hours, until it has almost doubled in volume.
Now that it has risen well, bake in a preheated oven at 392°F for 35–40 minutes. When the Easter bread is cooked, brush the top with a beaten yolk and return to the oven for one minute, then remove and let cool.
Una Riccia recommends
Abruzzo Easter bread keeps for three or four days if you can manage to keep it that long!!! You can also freeze it, perhaps already sliced, so you can take out just what you need each time.
