The Italian classic cheese pastry filled and delicately flavored inside, crisp and crunchy outside. You have probably heard this pastry mentioned on The Sopranos. Sfogliatelle is pronouned something like (shvwee-ah-dell).
How hard is it to make them?
Making the filling is a doddle; it’s the riccia pastry that is seriously challenging. The rolling out until it’s a mile-long, paper-thin tongue of pastry is infinitely helped by a pasta machine though I do not doubt the original nuns and innumerable later nonnas would spurn such device with a menacing shake of a rolling pin.
And then the shaping of a multi-layered disc of dough into a thin pocket is a bit like trying to unfurl a roll of ribbon into a tube without using glue. But even if the pastry is not perfectly flaky and layered, if it is a little clumpy, it will still taste incredibly good.
And the satisfaction of the achievement is as enormously blissful.
My recipe instruction is the result of scouring numerous YouTube videos, all of them making it look very easy. The pastry and filling recipe based is on an Australian Italian one by Claudio Ferrano. As I said, wherever the Italian émigré chefs set up their pastry boards…
What are sfogliatelle filled with?
The filling is made from cooked semolina beaten until smooth with ricotta and eggs.
The flavouring is vanilla, lemon, orange and cinnamon, all of those together or each featuring separately. It’s like frangipane or pastry cream as it can be stuffed into uncooked shells and baked as a whole.
The Sopranos – Christopher buys some Pastry
FAQ
What pastries do they eat in The Sopranos?
What is the Italian pastry sfogliatelle made of?
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