Via Emilia Recipe: Tigella Bread or Mountain Crescentina

Some foods remember to me of special memories and experiences.
So it is for me with tigella bread. A typical flatbread of Emilia region.

Via Emilia

It depends on which side of Via Emilia you are born.
For me, grown on the Romagna side, tigella, or crescentina Montanara (from mountain), is a specialty of Emilia, one of the two parts of the Emilia-Romagna region, that I started to appreciate after I moved to Bologna.

Because at every step of life, there is always something to learn or to taste.

I have never eaten a tigella during the first twenty years of my life.
It may seem incredible, but that’s the truth. At home and outside, only piadina, and only the typical piadina of my area, that you find in the provinces of Forlì and Ravenna, different from the thin one of the Rimini-Cattolica area.

Saturday’s dinner

A cookbook is never just a collection of ingredients and methods.
When I leaf through one of the family recipe books, I often leave for a trip among memories. Each recipe is a dive into the waves of a peaceful and welcoming sea.

Some foods, however, more than others, are connected not only, or not so much, to good memories.

They are stones placed on the sides of the road to indicate the kilometers are missing from the finish line or symbols of a transformation or a goal.

The tigelle, for me, symbolically represents the passage from my life as a girl to my adult life.

Of course, I wasn’t aware of what I see so clearly today. But when I think back to Saturday night dinners a long time ago, I realize it is so.

Before girls, and suddenly, young woman

The first years in Bologna were intense. I was very busy with my study and lessons, and my head was full of dreams.

But when I met the man who became my husband, I started going out (almost) every night. I was young, happy, and so busy living that I didn’t realize that every step I took led me toward my adult life.

About that period, I remember a lovely group of friends of my boyfriend (not yet-husband), all with a passion for good food.

Without planning it, every week for at least a couple of years, we chose and tried restaurants, trattorias, and old osterie that offered traditional Bolognese and Emilian food.

Choose the place, organize the trip, eat until you burst, and immediately start again to finish the tigelle, inevitably, with Nutella and jams. It was all part of the same trip.

We were a group of good guys if you think that the best of our venture was to drive, always with caution, to find the best tigelle or crescentine.

Food Note: when in Modena, ask for crescentina montanara if you want to eat tigelle. When in Bologna, ask for tigella because crescentina is the fried one.

Tigella bread

As I told you, in Bologna, it’s called tigella.
Tigelle have a very ancient origin, and the name “tigella” could come from the terracotta mold already used in Roman times. Molds that then, in recent times, have become die-cast aluminum.

Tigelle and piadine are part of the same large family of ancient bread called flatbread.

Like other recipes such as mistocchine (pancakes made with chestnut flour and water) and Zuccherini cookies, tigelle are also a poor preparation, just water, and flour, typical of the Modena and Bologna Apennines that – at a certain point – arrive in the city.

Unlike the mistocchine, which today almost nobody remembers, the tigelle have had better luck.

To cook the tigelle, you don’t need a mold like mine.

Its characteristic is to reproduce the typical doodles on the tigella’s surface.
But it is tigella even without decoration.

Buona cucina, Monica

Food Tips

You can change the lard with 30g of olive oil.

Take note of this tip that gave me a real azdora: NEVER let the tigellas defrost. As soon as you take them out of the freezer, immediately put them on a hot pan for a minute or two and turn them from both sides. This way they stay soft inside and crunchy outside. Otherwise you risk serving them a bit soft.

How To Make Tigella Bread

serves 6
List of Ingredients

500 gr flour 0
50 gr lard
7 gr brewer’s yeast
15 gr sugar
120 g sparkling water, cold
200 g whole milk
7 gr salt

Method

In a bowl, mix the flour with yeast and sugar.

Add water and stir for a couple of minutes, then add milk, lard, and salt.

Now start kneading, and as soon as the mixture is solid enough, move to a floured surface. Work the dough until smooth and homogeneous.

Make a ball and let it rest for about an hour, covered with a clean cloth.

Take the dough and tear with your hands some pieces all of the same weight, roughly, suitable for your tigelliera’s discs and make some balls (if you have the mold to make mini tigelle, like me, calculate about 30g of dough per tigella for about 40 pieces).

Let it rest for another 30 minutes under a cloth.

After this time, lightly squeeze each little ball with your hand and let them rest for another 30 minutes.

If you don’t have the tigelliera, it doesn’t matter. Cook tigelle bread on a pan or in the oven. 

Lightly grease the tigelliera, or the pan, put the mold on the heat, and when it’s warm, place a piece of dough in each disc of the tigelliera (or a certain number of little balls in the pan), then cook the tigelle on a medium-low flame for about 3 minutes for each side.

Serve hot tigelle with salumi and cheeses but also jams or marmalade.