Crescentina Modenese

Small discs of lard dough fried until they puff hollow, split and filled at the table.

Not vegetarian — contains lard.

Ingredients

• 500 g plain flour
• 200 ml milk
• 60 g lard
• 7 g dried yeast
• 10 g salt
• 1 litre sunflower oil, for deep frying, which is poured off

Method

1. Mix the flour, milk, lard, yeast and salt and knead 10 minutes to a soft smooth dough.
2. Prove 1 hour until doubled.
3. Roll to 4 mm and cut discs about 10 cm across. Thicker than that and they fry heavy; thinner and they crisp instead of puffing.
4. Rest the discs 20 minutes under a cloth.
5. Heat the oil to 180C and fry one or two at a time, pressing each gently under the surface with a slotted spoon for the first few seconds.
6. THAT PUSH IS WHAT MAKES THEM PUFF. Held under, the whole surface heats at once, the water inside turns to steam and blows the disc into a hollow ball; left floating, one side cooks first and it stays flat.
7. Turn once and fry 1 minute a side in total until pale gold.
8. Drain and serve hot, to be torn open and filled with whatever is on the table.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes