Casatiello Napoletano · Casatiello
Campania · bread · serves 10 · 540 min total · medium
Casatiello is the Neapolitan Easter bread — heavy with lard, stuffed with cheese and salami, crowned with whole eggs (a pagan symbol of rebirth caged in dough crosses). Every Naples grandmother has a recipe, every recipe is the real one. Eaten cold on Pasquetta, the picnic Monday after Easter.
Ingredients
- 500 g strong bread flour
- 280 ml warm water
- 10 g fresh yeast
- 100 g lard (strutto), softened
- 80 g aged pecorino, grated
- 40 g Parmigiano, grated
- 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 10 g fine sea salt
- 200 g Neapolitan salami + pancetta, diced
- 150 g caciocavallo or provola, diced
- 4 eggs whole raw eggs in shell, for the top
Method
- Dissolve yeast in water. Mix with flour, salt, half the lard, and a generous grind of pepper. Knead 10 min to a smooth dough.
- First rise 3 hours until tripled.
- Roll the dough into a large rectangle (40×30 cm). Smear with the rest of the lard, then scatter both cheeses, all the diced meat and a heavy hand of black pepper.
- Roll up tight from the long side into a thick sausage. Pinch the seam and bring the ends together to form a ring.
- Lift into a greased 26 cm ring tin, seam-down.
- Press the four eggs (shells on) into the top at quarter intervals. Make a cross of dough strips over each egg to hold it in.
- Final rise 90 minutes until the dough has risen well above the rim.
- Heat oven to 180°C (360°F). Bake 55–60 minutes until dark gold. Cool in the tin 15 min, then turn out. Best the next day.