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Synonymous with Salento all over the world, the pasticciotto seems to have been born by chance in 1745 thanks to a pastry chef from Galatina.
For over two hundred years Salento has rhymed with pasticciotto, a shortcrust pastry filled with cream and baked in the oven, born in Galatina in 1745.
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PASTICCIOTTO, A “RANDOM” RECIPE
Today it can be tasted almost everywhere, from north to south of the peninsula, in the mid-18th century it represented great news for traditional Apulian cuisine. It seems that Andrea Ascalone, a pastry chef from Salento who became the unsuspecting signature of a dessert destined to enter the list of typical delicacies of the region, has invented the recipe for pasticciotto. It is said that Ascalone in that period was experiencing economic difficulties and that, in search of greater fortune, he spent his days making new recipes. Once he decided to mix leftover dough and cream after informing one cake, trying to make another much smaller one. The result, however, did not make him crazy too much, after all it was a decidedly improvised dessert, a mess. The first pasticciotto in history, Ascalone would have immediately given it still warm to a passer-by who, however, never stopped giving compliments.
The pasticciotto
The history of the pasticciotto is reconstructed by Zeffirino Rizzelli, former mayor of Galatina, journalist and lover of peasant history, who died in 2007. Not many years ago Rizzelli conducted studies on historical documents to reconstruct the events of Andrea Ascalone and a dessert able to conquer the palates of every latitude within two centuries. According to the information gathered, an anonymous chronicler of the time said that Ascalone, "between a candy and a cake, quite available", found a dough and a little cream "not sufficient to manipulate another piece". He therefore decides to use those left by putting them in a small copper container and making a very small cream cake ". The passer-by who was amazed would have been Don Silvestro, the parish priest of the town who visited the pastry chef every morning. The parish priest immediately fell in love with that dessert and they ordered others for his family, to Ascalone's amazement. Don Silvestro thus becomes the best advertisement for his creation: the new rumor begins to circulate in the country and the canteens begin to run.
Fillings: cream, cream and black cherry, cream and fig, pistachio, chocolate, rocher, almonds and black cherry