6x sweet treats from the Italian bakery
Italians love a sweet breakfast, and they prefer to have it quickly, on the go. In the morning, they pick up their favorite baked goods for the road at the bakery around the corner. Some choose light and airy bomboloni, while others devour a sfogliatelle with custard. With a sip of espresso, of course.
Cornetti
A cornetti looks like a croissant, but it is somewhat sweeter and also baked to be lighter and airier. This pastry makes for a perfect breakfast that, when you’re hungry, you can upgrade from a cornetto semplice to a cornetti filled with cream, jam, chocolate or almond paste. It will be injected with the filling for you.
Sfogliatelle
This pastry from Naples is a true work of art. It consists of a thousand layers of dough (yes, really!) and takes on the shape of a gigantic shell in the oven. Because the layers are so thin and are well coated with butter, they become wonderfully crispy during baking. This pastry is sweet, too. That has less to do with the dough than with how you fill the sfogliatelle shell. With custard, ricotta or chocolate: the choice is endless.
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Pasticciotto
The pasticciotto is a small tart made with shortcrust pastry, filled with pastry cream and finished with a glossy egg-yolk coating. The tart is somewhat similar to the Portuguese pastéis de nata. Apparently, the very best ones can be found in Lecce in southern Italy.
Bomboloni
The Tuscan bombolone can be compared to a doughnut. It is just somewhat rounder, lighter and airier, and there is no hole in the middle. Lemon zest is also added to the batter. You eat it nice and warm, not with a glaze coating but with a dusting of fine sugar on top. Sometimes it is also filled with custard or jam.
Buccellato
This sweet, round bread (or perhaps we should simply call it a pastry) from Tuscany, with raisins and aniseed, is best enjoyed by Italians at any time of day: at breakfast, they dip it in milk, and toward the end of the afternoon, they eat a slice with their coffee.
Taralli
These little bread rings are widely eaten in Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot. What makes them so crispy? There is no water in the dough, but wine and olive oil. You always bake them briefly first before putting them in the oven. In Italy, you’ll find countless sweet varieties of this pretzel-like snack, as well as savory taralli with rosemary, red pepper and oregano.
