Casatiello Napoletano Recipe: Italian Easter Bread with Meat and Cheese

You may also have heard of a similar recipe called Tortano , another Neapolitan bread recipe. The difference lies in the way eggs are added: in the Casatiello recipe you have to put the whole raw eggs on the dough before baking it; in Tortano recipe you have to chop, or slice, the boiled eggs and add mix them in the dough.

Italian Easter Bread with Meat and Cheese

Casatiello and Tortano are regional recipes from Southern Italy, two traditional Italian Easter pies filled with pork meat or cheese, but there are also other exemples of Easter stuffed bread like the Easter bread with cheese, an Umbrian recipe, or a Tuscany Easter bread with minced lard.

How to make Casatiello Easter Bread

INGREDIENTS

8 servings

• 21 oz Flour 00

• 1cup 4 tbs water

• ½ oz Brewer’s yeast

• 5 oz Lard

• 14 oz diced Salami and bacon

• 14 oz diced Provolone and Fontina

• 2,5 oz grated Pecorino cheese

• 4 Eggs

• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Sieve the flour onto a pastry board and make a well in the middle.

2. Dissolve yeast in warm water and add it to the flour. Mix using a fork and then start kneading the dough.

3. Add the lard, keeping a bit that you’ll use to grease the baking pan.

4. Salt and pepper to taste.

5. Knead the dough energetically, adding the lard and Pecorino cheese gradually.

6. Shape a ball with the dough, place it on a board and let it rise for about 1 hour.

7. When the dough has doubled in size, you can roll it out and make a sheet approximately 1 cm (0.4 inches) thick.

8. Set aside some dough to make the strips that will secure the boiled eggs on top of the Casatiello.

9. Put diced cheese, salami and bacon over the dough sheet and roll it.

10. Take a tube pan, grease it with lard and put the roll into the pan to obtain a donut shape.

11. Let it rise overnight.

12. Put the washed and dried eggs on the top and secure them with dough strips arranged in a cross.

13. Now you can grease the whole Casatiello with lard.

14. Bake in a preheated oven for one hour at 320° F.