Gubana

By CheeseDiva

Ingredients

• 5 cups (600 grams) bakers/strong/bread flour
• 10 ounces (300 grams) cold milk
• 1 cup (180 grams) sugar
• 1/2 ounce (15 grams) fresh yeast
• 1 egg, plus 1 extra egg yolk
• 5 1/2 ounces (160 grams) butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Finely grated zest of one lemon and one orange
• 1 vanilla bean, split and scraped of seeds
• 8 ounces (220 grams) raisins
• 1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar
• 3 ounces (80 grams) peeled almonds
• 3 ounces (80 grams) walnuts
• 1.5 ounces (40 grams) hazelnuts
• 1 ounce (30 grams) pinenuts
• 1/4 cup (60 milliliters) moscato, marsala or other sweet wine
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 ounces (40 grams) butter
• 4 ounces 120 grams plain cookies (such as graham crackers), crushed
• 1 1/2 ounces (50 grams) candied orange peel, chopped
• 1 1/2 ounces (50 grams) amaretti cookies, crushed
• 1/4 cup (30 grams) bittersweet cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Zest of 1 lemon

Preparation

Step 1

This filling is a long list of ingredients that includes four types of nuts, raisins, cookies (or in some recipes, breadcrumbs), sweet wine, sugar and cocoa. In some cases, rum or grappa, honey and candied cedro also make an appearance. You'll only need a thin slice of this rich, satisfying treat to get you in the festive mood.

In a mixer, combine the flour, milk, sugar and yeast. Add the egg plus yolk and the butter, a little at a time until well incorporated. Add the rest of the dough ingredients and continue mixing until you have an elastic (but not dry) dough.

Lightly toast then roughly chop the almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and pine nuts. Combine all the ingredients together in a food processor until you have a thick paste.

Roll the dough to a rectangular form until it is no higher than 1/2-1cm (about 1/4-1/2 inch) thick. Spread the filling over the dough, leaving an inch border around. Roll the dough up along the longest edge (see photo) into a log. Then roll the log around itself like a snail shell shape and place in a lined round tin. Let rise in a warm place for about an hour.

Brush with egg over the top if desired then bake at 350 F for 40-60 minutes or until dark golden on top and inside is fluffy and cooked.

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I made two of these for Christmas morning. One I filled according to recipe, and the other I filled with an orange fig mixture. I put one in a 10 inch springform pan and the other in a larger ceramic casserole dish. I let them both rise overnight and baked them in the morning. Very good-well received by everyone.

Thanks for sharing this recipe, Emiko! I used it to make a Gubana for Christmas and my grandma (who is from Trieste) loved it (after pouring some Grappa over her slice though!)

Emiko - The original recipe just says " Let Rise", so the advice to let it double in size is necessarily helpful. For those of us who need to plan ahead for cooking timeframe it would be most helpful to have a benchmark range for rise time - an hour, 1-2 hours, four days? - before we start to make the recipe. Thank you for your consideration.

Thanks for the suggestion Paula! The fact is that timing can differ depending on the conditions in the kitchen (i.e. how warm it is, if there is a draft) so I don't use a time. While the traditional recipe says to wait for it to double in size, when I made the cake that you see in the photos, it hadn't actually doubled in size completely when I baked it! So it could even be fluffier if you wanted (the result is a thicker layer of bread as it rises) but I think it's sufficient to "let it rise". Perhaps you can be more specific about the problems you had in baking this cake as there are many other areas of troubleshooting and it may not have been how long you let the cake rise for?

Thanks Emiko and Valentina. I do have strong bread flour. And do try to make a Pandoro once. I know it is no easy task though. I once used the recipe from the "Sorelle Simili," and it turned out fairly good for a first timer like me.

Thanks so much for your comment Valentina, it's SO good, isn't it? It makes my day that someone gets why these regional recipes are my passion! :)

Baker's flour is also known as strong flour or bread flour, it's a high protein flour with more gluten in it (making the dough more elastic than regular plain flour). If you can find flour that's meant for baking bread, pizza etc, that's the one! I have also heard adding cornstarch to regular flour works too. Pandoro? Hm, yes, I'll take it on board! Might have to wait till next christmas but will test a few recipes in the meantime! ;)

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