Tortano Bread from Scratch

 

Tortano Bread from Scratch is Italian Easter bread filled with eggs, spicy salami, ham, cheese and pork crackings. Perfect brunch or outdoor picnic snack.

In most of the cases, we serveTortano and Casatiello for Easter brunch. One of the differences between these two is that hard boiled eggs are finely chopped and added to filling in Tortano while in Casatiello, whole hard boiled eggs are on the top of the savoury cake and serve as decoration as well. Casatiello is, also, richer with the ingredients but I made rich version of Tortano Bread from Scratch, with pepperoni, ham, quail eggs, and pork cracklings.

Tortano Bread from Scratch is smaller version of rounded Italian Easter bread, meant for smaller gatherings. It fits fine in 7 cups volume, 10 x 4 inches bread dish. If you are interested in full version please look here .

 

Because of it’s simplicity and beautiful taste, this beautiful bread could be made for any party or picnic.  Most of the ingredients are at hand since we all use them to make sandwiches and pizzas.

 

There is, maybe, one ingredient that is not that well known to all of you and it’s pork cracklings.

They are one of so many tasty hand made products during  pig slaughter ( Maialata ) season. It is late autumn pigs festival and it is the season when people make winter stocks of dry meat products, bathed in salt, smoked and cured in cold northern winds. Some meat is cut and stored in the freezer but cracklings and sausages are the products we do since ancient times during the second day of the festival.

 

Women cut the pig’s back fat to small cubes and melt in the large pots until the cubes become golden. To make them taste better, they add some milk to the mixture.

Then, it’s men to do the rest of the work: strong hands are needed to squeeze the cubes into cracklings and salt them. More crackling are squeezed, better the taste.

 

Pork crackings can be stored to last for the whole winter. We usually pack smaller batches to keep in the freezer. Here are those taken out to have for Tortano Bread from Scratch but also to have a snack with a slice of bread and Giardiniera Sottaceto ( abbreviation of „sotto aceto“, meaning literary „under vinegar“ ) :

 

How to make Tortano bread ?

You need to wake up earlier than the rest of the family if you prefer to slice it while still warm.. It’ early birds job. You start with sponge and then add the rest of dough ingredients.

Here is our bread just before rolling into the „sausage“ to place into the pan:

 

Since the dough needs three hours rising all together, the process takes the whole morning. Once you see the full recipe details, you’ll se it’s only 35 minutes of your active time and you just want to organize your time a bit. I make my plan the evening before and it works.