The recipe: Parrozzo (part one)

2017-12-25 Today we’ll be listing all the ingredients you need to make Parrozzo, a traditional Christmas dessert (which is just as good all year round) fromAbruzzo. It’s particularly popular in Pescara, the town where it was first made in 1920.
It was Pescara-born Luigi D’Amico, a patisserie owner, who came up with the idea of making a sweet version of Abruzzo’s centuries-old country bread.
He used a domed mouldto reproduce the shape of the traditional loaves, added eggs and almonds to the dough to make it the same yellow as the rustic cornmeal bread, and even poured melted chocolateover the top to make it look like the crust darkened in a wood-fired oven.
But parrozzo hadn’t been christened just yet… it was Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio who gave it its name. On entering the D’Amico patisserie, he was asked what he would call the new dessert. He didn’t hesitate for a second: “parrozzo”, or pane rozzo (rough bread): “rough” in the sense of honest, genuine, no-frills.
The recipe we’re giving you today comes from Chef Mario Grazia. It’s fairly difficult to prepare and takes an hour and a half to make (40 minutes preparation + 50 minutes cooking time).
 
Here are the ingredients for 4 people.
 
For the dessert:

• 4 eggs
• 70 g flour;
• 35 g potato starch;
• 125 g blanched sweet almonds;
• 2-3 bitter almonds;
• 160 g sugar;
• 12 g baking powder;
• grated zest of a lemon;
• 10 g butter;
• flour for coating the mould.

 
For the topping:

• 50 ml cream;
• 100 g dark chocolate;
• slivered almonds.

 
We’ll be revealing how to make Parrozzo in our next post.
 
Mariagrazia Villa
 
Recipe: Chef Mario Grazia (Academia Barilla).
Source: Academia Barilla (ed.), Dolci tentazioni. 120 capolavori della cucina italiana, Edizioni White Star, Novara, 2013.