Colomba di Pasqua (1/2)

The first recipe on a blog should be interesting, catchy and fast. I had some initial ideas about different recipes such as cheesecake, meat balls, vegetarian burgers, home made pasta...but then it came to my mind a traditional italian pastry, the Colomba di Pasqua (in translation "The Easter Dove"). This is something I really like and that I will miss during this Easter. 

So I said to myself, why not making it at home? Ok, after reading different recipes I found that this one requires time, a lot of time. Preparing it takes around 20 hours!  It is quiet hard to prepare, but I like challenges in kitchen.

Easter is coming and to celebrate the creation of The Hungry Pigeon making a dove-shaped pastry seemed very appropriate. :)

In the end it looks like this recipe will be interesting but for sure not fast! so I apologize to all the readers which were expecting a fancy burger.

INGREDIENTS (dough):

90 ml warm milk (cca 37°C)

6 g (beer) yeast

125-135 g soft butter

275 g flour

25 g honey

3  yolks

90 g sugar

vanilla

orange and lemon skin

cca 75 g candied citrus (orange, lemon, citrus)

bit of salt

Before starting, something interesting about Colomba:

Colomba has a long tradition in Italy. The inhabitants of Pavia offered this pastry to king Alboin like a symbol of peace in the sixth century. Last time this recipe was changed was in the start of the 20th century. The company Motta from Milano started to offer this pastry like Easter pastry. The traditional recipe of Colomba contains candied citruses and oranges and it is covered by almond crust.

Italians protect the original repice and the name of Colomba by law, in short if you name something colomba it must follow certain rules and ingredients. They have also a strong tradition, which means that you can buy Colomba only during Easter.