Sfogliatelle

Is a pastry defined by its filling or its outer shell? That is the question we must ask when determining the origins of the sfogliatella. To me, the answer is obvious: the outer shell. After all, a profiterole can be filled with almost any kind of cream, jam, or ganache, but its defining element is the pâte à choux, or choux pastry, which creates the vessel that holds the filling. Similarly, Danish pastries can be filled with fruit, jam, cream cheese, or even chocolate, but they are all made with the yeast-leavened, laminated dough called puff pastry.

So when it comes to the invention of the sfogliatella, we are told it was created by a nun at the Santa Rosa convent on Italy’s Amalfi Coast in the 17^th century. Not wanting to throw away some semolina that had been cooked in milk, the story goes, she added dried fruit, sugar, and limoncello and baked it between two sheets of pastry shaped to look like a monk’s hood. She served it to her Mother Superior, who decided it was good enough to sell to the local villagers and named it after the convent itself — the Santarosa.

But this sfogliatella Santarosa, as it was later called, was very different from the sfogliatelle that have become synonymous with Naples. The original Santarosa sfogliatella was made with shortcrust pastry, not the thin-layered laminated dough used for “curly” sfogliatelle riccia that are attributed to Pasquale Pintauro, a Naples innkeeper turned pastry chef. And the Santarosa’s topping of soft custard and black cherries has all but disappeared from the Neapolitan version.

It was in the early 19^th century, nearly 150 years after the invention of the Santarosa pastry, that sfogliatelle as we know them appeared in Naples. Pintauro is said to have acquired the recipe from an aunt who happened to be a nun. But while they share a name and a semolina-based filling, that seems to be where the similarity between the two pastries ends. (Another version of sfogliatelle, called sfogliatella frolla, which came along later, retains the original shortcrust pastry and semolina filling of the Santarosa pastry.)

Rather than a shortcrust pastry, the dough for sfogliatella riccia, the version I am sharing with you here, is spread paper thin, slathered with lard and rolled into a log. When the log is sliced, each piece is flattened so that the individual layers spread apart like a fan, creating a cone-shaped pocket, which is then filled, sealed and baked. The resulting seashell-shaped pastry is golden brown, delicate, and delightfully crunchy, with a creamy filling often flavored with candied orange peel and fragrant spices.

Because Steven’s sfogliatelle were pronounced “authentic” by the judges in the Great White Tent, I used his recipe for the dough, with the addition of a little honey, which is recommended by Italian-American food blogger Marcella Cantatore to give the dough a bit of sweetness and help it brown in the oven. Otherwise, it’s a simple dough of bread flour, salt, and water. Bread flour has a higher protein content than all-purpose (plain) flour, so the dough is able to develop more gluten, giving it the stretchiness needed to create such thin layers. 

The Bake Off judges requested 24 sfogliatelle with two different fillings, so I chose one with a traditional semolina and ricotta cheese base, adding chopped Amarena cherries and dark chocolate instead of citrus peel. And for the other 12 pastries, I decided to use a French almond cream similar to that used in almond croissants.

Making sfogliatelle is quite a production, but fortunately it can be done in stages over a few days. Making the dough in advance and leaving it to rest in the fridge gives the gluten time to relax, giving it even more elasticity. The semolina filling can also be made up to three days ahead of time. Here’s how I divided the project into three days:

• Day 1 — Make the dough and the chocolate-cherry filling.
• Day 2 — Stretch the dough and roll it up.
• Day 3 — Make the almond filling; assemble and bake the pastries.

Using a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook makes the first step — making the dough — quite easy. After the first overnight rest comes the labor-intensive part — stretching the dough paper thin and rolling it up like a Swiss roll. I knew I would need to purchase a pasta machine for this bake, but fortunately, there are a lot of them available on eBay in like-new or gently used condition. 

Working with small portions of dough at a time, I ran it through the pasta machine on the widest setting, folded it in thirds, then ran it through again, repeating this step three more times until the dough was smooth and pliable. Then I began reducing the width between the pasta rollers each time, creating a long, thin sheet of dough that was almost transparent. 

Spreading it on my kitchen island (Make sure you have a large work surface cleared — at least 4 feet long), I then proceeded to stretch it even more by hand until it had almost doubled in width. Once that piece of dough was 7 or 8 inches wide and 4 to 5 feet long, I spread it with a mixture of lard and butter (another suggestion of Marcella’s — she doesn’t recommend using all butter) and rolled it up from one of the narrow ends, continuing to stretch the dough as I went. 

After repeating this process with the rest of the dough and attaching each piece to the previous roll, I had one large log of dough. Even at this stage you can stretch the log to make it longer. You want about a 14-inch log to make 24 sfogliatelle. 

I left the dough log in the fridge overnight, and when I was ready to form the pastries, I cut off the straggly ends and sliced the log into ½-inch disks. Taking one disk at a time, I placed my thumbs in the center and slowly flattened the disk from the center outward, separating the layers and creating a cone-shaped pocket. After piping some of the filling into the pocket, I pinched it closed with my fingers and placed it on the baking tray. When all 24 pastries were assembled, they got one final chill in the fridge for about 20 minutes and then baked at 450°F for 15-18 minutes.

They came out golden and crisp and looked almost as good as the one I bought at an Italian coffee shop a few days earlier (strictly for research purposes, of course). With such a large batch, I was glad to be able to share them with friends and family. Everyone gave them rave reviews! 

Making these pastries could be a family affair, with everyone taking turns rolling and stretching the dough. The process is forgiving enough that even little kids could be involved. (A few rips or holes in the dough won’t be noticed in the end product.) These may not make it onto my regular baking rotation, but they could become a family tradition!