Pastiera Napoletana

Pastiera Napoletana is a traditional Italian Easter pie filled with ricotta, cooked wheat berries, and beautiful citrus flavors. It's bound to be a hit on your Easter table!

Course Dessert

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 45

Cook Time 1

Total Time 1 45

Servings people

Calories 467kcal

Author Pina Bresciani

Ingredients

For the dough

1 ⅓ cup Tenderflake lard
2 ½ + 3 tbsp cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
½ tablespoon white vinegar
water

For the filling

1 cup grano cotto (cooked wheat berries)
½ cup + 2 tbsp milk
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups ricotta
¾ cup sugar
4 eggs
zest of one orange
2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Prepare the dough

In a large mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients with a hand pastry blender until small crumbs form.
Prepare your wet ingredients by beating the egg, adding the vinegar to it, then pouring this mixture into a measuring cup. Add water until wet ingredients equals a half cup.
Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and work with your hands until a ball of dough forms. Set the dough aside.

Prepare the filling

In a saucepan, add the grano cotto, butter and milk. Bring the ingredients to a gentle boil, and stir continuously until a cream-like consistency is reached, about 20 minutes. Let the grano cotto mixture cool.
In a bowl, mix ricotta, sugar and eggs, vanilla extract, and orange zest with a wooden spoon until ingredients are fully incorporated.
Mix the grano cotto and ricotta mixtures together.

To finish the Pastiera

Place dough on a flat, floured surface, use a rolling pin to roll dough out. Add more flour if the dough is feeling a little moist. The thickness of the dough should be about ½ cm.
Transfer the dough to a pie dish and cut off any edges that hang off the pie dish.
Spoon in the filling. Feel free to make a lattice design with the extra dough or leave plain and decorate with fruit after baked.
Bake for 80 minutes at 350 degrees fahrenheit, or until pastiera is golden on the edges.
Sprinkle with icing sugar

Notes

A traditional pastiera is topped with a lattice. You can for certain top this pastiera with a lattice, or if you want a less traditional look/feel, you can omit the lattice and top it with fresh fruit as shown instead.
When mixing the ricotta mixture together, instead of mixing manually, you can use a hand mixer or stand mixer. Just be sure to fold in the grano cotto mixture by hand (with a wooden spoon).
You may have extra pie dough left, especially if you omit the lattice on the top of the pastiera
This recipe was made in a 9.5 inch Pyrex glass pie dish, so the filling amounts are suited to a dish of this size.

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