Tigelle
Small round soft breads from Emilia, risen for 1 hour and cooked on a hot pan for 15 minutes, split and filled with cured meat and cheese.
Photograph credit: Tigelle di Bologna by El Mono Español · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
How to Cook Tigelle
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Mix the flour, milk, lard, yeast, salt and sugar and knead for 8 minutes until smooth. Cover and leave to rise for 1 hour.
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Roll the dough out 1 cm thick and cut 7 cm rounds, re-rolling the scraps.
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Heat a dry heavy pan over medium heat and cook the rounds for 6 minutes on each side, in batches, until puffed and pale gold.
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Split them with a fork while hot and fill with the prosciutto and cheese.
What Can Go Wrong
- Keep the heat at medium so they cook through.
- Split with a fork for a rough inside.
- Serve hot, straight from the pan.
The Short Version
A bread for a table of twelve, eaten warm, split open and filled with whatever is on the board. Tigelle are small, round, flat breads from Emilia, cooked in a hot pan rather than baked, and they come out soft inside with a pale crust.
The dough is flour, milk, yeast, a little lard and salt, kneaded until smooth and left to rise for 1 hour. Roll it out about 1 cm thick and cut out rounds of 7 cm. Keep the pan at a medium heat, not a high one, because the breads need time to cook through. A heavy griddle or a frying pan with no oil is right, and each side needs about 6 minutes.
They puff slightly as they cook and take only a little colour, in pale gold patches. Split them while hot, with a fork rather than a knife, so the inside stays rough and takes up the filling. The traditional spread is a paste of lard, garlic and rosemary. Cured ham, soft cheese and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar are also common.
To Go With It
Prosciutto · Soft cheese · Balsamic vinegar · Red wine
Leftovers
Best fresh. Keeps for 2 days wrapped; warm in a pan before serving.
Quick Answers
How long does Tigelle take to make?
20 minutes of preparation and 15 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour of Rising, so allow 1 hour 35 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 12.
Tigelle Nutrition Facts
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: part of the energy comes from foods, or weights per item, with no recorded source. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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