Name: Pizzetta sfoglia cagliaritana (home recipe)
Prep time: 25 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: Makes 12
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 500g all-butter puff pastry; 300g thick tomato passata, reduced; 1 teaspoon dried oregano; 2 tablespoons salted capers, rinsed; 8 anchovy fillets in oil, chopped (optional); 2 tablespoons olive oil; Salt

History

The pizzetta sfoglia is a post-war Cagliari invention, dated by local accounts to the 1950s. The story told in the city is that a pastry chef with puff pastry left over from croissant production cut it into small discs and dressed them with tomato sauce and capers from Selargius, and that the snack caught on because it was cheap, filling and portable in a city rebuilding after the 1943 bombing. It has stayed a bakery product rather than a pizzeria one, sold by the piece from counters across Villanova, Stampace and the Marina, eaten standing up at breakfast or as an afternoon fill.

Common allergens: Gluten, Fish

Make it at home

Yield Makes 12Hands-on 25 minTotal 45 minDifficulty Easy

Ingredients

500g all-butter puff pastry
300g thick tomato passata, reduced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons salted capers, rinsed
8 anchovy fillets in oil, chopped (optional)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt

Method

Reduce the passata in a pan with a spoon of oil and a pinch of salt until it is thick enough to hold a line drawn through it, then cool it.
Roll the puff pastry to 4mm and cut discs of about 8cm. Rest them on a lined tray in the fridge for 15 minutes.
Spread a heaped teaspoon of the cold tomato on each disc, leaving a clear border of 5mm.
Scatter over the oregano, the capers and the anchovy if you are using it, then trickle over the remaining oil.
Bake at 200C fan for 15 to 18 minutes, until the pastry has risen at the edges and browned underneath.
Eat warm, or at room temperature the way the Cagliari counters sell them.

Tip from the editors. The tomato has to be thick and cold. Wet sauce steams the pastry and you lose the layers underneath.