Emilia-Romagna · Bread
Piadina Romagnola
- Easy
- 30 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 500 g farina 00
- 80 g strutto (rendered pork lard), soft
- 250 ml whole milk, lukewarm
- 10 g fine salt
- 5 g bicarbonate of soda
Equipment
Skillet
The skills inside
Kneading doughSteaming: basket, leaf and lidShaping by handRubbing fat into flourThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the strutto into the flour, salt and bicarbonate until it looks like damp sand, add the milk and knead 5 minutes to a soft dough that is smooth but still takes a fingerprint. 5 min
- Divide into 6, roll into balls and rest them covered 30 minutes, until they no longer spring back when pressed. 30 min
- Roll each into a 25 cm disc about 3 mm thick and prick it lightly all over with a fork.
- Cook on a dry cast iron plate at 250C (480F), about 90 seconds a side, turning when the underside is freckled with brown blisters and the rim has stiffened.
- Stack them under a cloth as they come off the iron so their own steam keeps them pliable.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
Kneading dough 57 recipes
- The work changed it: what began shaggy and rough is one smooth, cohesive mass, with nothing raggy hanging off it.
- The surface has gone satin and barely tacky, releasing cleanly from hands and board instead of leaving a trail.
- Worked to the point this dough asks for and no further: springy and elastic where structure is wanted, just brought together where tenderness is.
- Torn or cut open, the inside is uniform: no dry streaks, no unmixed pockets, no core of flour that never met the water.
- After its rest it rolls and shapes without snapping back. A dough that fights the pin needed more rest, not more force.
Where it goes wrong Sticking was fought with flour instead of technique or patience, stroke after stroke, until the dough had taken in far more than the formula asked; it turns tight and dry under the hands, and bakes dense however well everything else goes.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chenin Blanc (Vouvray sec)
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.