Torta paesana

Torta paesana is a sweet from the Brianza area of Lombardy in northern Italy, made by soaking stale bread in milk. The bread is left to absorb the milk, then mixed with eggs, fruit, nuts and other ingredients and baked. The ingredients vary from household to household and town to town, and it goes by many names, such as bread cake, milk cake and black cake.

In one example from a Lombard cookbook, thinly sliced bread is softened in milk, then mixed with eggs, raisins, pine nuts, apples and pears, and crushed amaretti. After the mixture is put into a pan, sugar, chopped chocolate and butter are scattered over the top, and it is baked. The dry bread absorbs the milk and becomes easy to break apart, forming a batter together with the fruit and the crumbled biscuits.

Other methods combine the bread and milk with cocoa or amaretti. Cocoa and similar ingredients produce the dark color. In some areas, wheat flour and cornmeal are also used.

“Paesana” is a name relating to the people of a village or locality. In Brianza it is also called “michelacc,” a name explained as deriving from the dialect words for “bread and milk.” That its ingredients and names differ from household to household is also a characteristic of this sweet. It was made as a snack, when welcoming guests, and for festivals. There was once a way of life in which large loaves of bread were baked and eaten a little at a time each day, with leftover bread also used in cooking. Bread that has already been baked once is soaked in milk and baked again to make this sweet.

Glossary