L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 22 L'Italo-Americano I n the farmhouses of t h e p l a i n a r o u n d P a r m a , a y o u n g woman who married i n t o a f a m i l y w a s asked one thing early on, a n d s h e w a s a s k e d i t i n dialect: Sit bón'na äd fär la fojäda? "Can you make the sfoglia?" The fojäda, like the Ital- ian sfoglia, is a sheet of egg pasta rolled out by hand on a wooden board, and asking a new bride whether she knew how to make it was not quite as innocent as it sounds: a y o u n g w o m a n w h o h a d never yet managed a kitchen of her own might well have had little practice, so the q u e s t i o n g a v e t h e o l d e r women a quick way of judg- i n g h o w c a p a b l e s h e w a s likely to be, once the cooking became her responsibility. The answers, as a recent article in the Gazzetta di Parma notes, were usually rather embarrassed, and so, the lessons began: the older women of the house – moth- ers-in-law, often formidable, a n d g r o w n s i s t e r s - i n - l a w who already knew exactly w h a t t h e y w e r e d o i n g – would take over and show the newcomer how flour and e g g s h a d t o b e w o r k e d together on the board with a firm, steady movement of the hands and wrists, until the dough became smooth enough to roll. O n t h e s h a r e c r o p p i n g f a r m s o f E m i l i a a n d Romagna, the kitchen was usually under the authority of one woman, known as the rezdora around Modena and P a r m a , t h e a r z d o u r a i n Bologna and the azdora in Romagna. All three words go back to the Latin regere, "to rule," and let me tell you this: the title was not exag- gerated. She decided what the family would eat, when it would be prepared, and who a m o n g t h e o t h e r w o m e n would do what; a good sheet of pasta was one of the clear- est signs that she knew her business, because the tagli- atelle of an ordinary Sunday and the tortellini of Christ- m a s b o t h b e g a n o n h e r board. Of course, none of t h i s c a m e f r o m a r e c i p e book, you learned by watch- ing another woman do it, then doing it yourself until your hands knew what to do. T h e s f o g l i n a , t h e w o m a n w h o s e w o r k i s m a k i n g sfoglia, is the result of this socio-cultural (and culinary) tradition. The pasta itself is simply flour and eggs, traditional- ly one egg for every hundred grams, about three and a half ounces, of flour, with no water, no oil and, for most sfogline, no salt. The rest is hands, wood and practice. A sfoglina works on a wooden board with a long rolling pin, the mattarello, winding the dough sheet around the pin, rolling it away under her palms, turning it, opening it again and keeping working outward, so that the dough is both stretched and thinned at the same time. Rina Polet- ti, a sfoglina from Finale Emilia who has demonstrat- ed the craft since the 1970s, explains why a handmade sfoglia is always better than a machine-made one: put t h e d o u g h t h r o u g h m e t a l rollers, and the sheet comes o u t s m o o t h ; w o r k i t w i t h wood, and the board takes up a little of the moisture as you go, which leaves the sur- face porous enough to catch t h e s a u c e . I f t h e p a s t a i s going under a ragù, that is not a minor detail at all. B o l o g n a h a s , a s o n e might expect, spent a great deal of time deciding what the finished result ought to be: Pellegrino Artusi was already recording the local opinion in 1891, when he included the saying conti corti e tagliatelle lunghe, short bills and long tagli- atelle. He explains the joke, t o o : l o n g b i l l s t e r r i f y t h e poor husband who has to pay them, while short tagli- atelle make it look as though the person who cut them did n o t k n o w w h a t s h e w a s doing and, worse, leave the plate looking as if lunch has been made out of scraps. Eventually, Bologna decided to set the matter of tagli- atelle's length when, in April 1972, the Italian Academy of Cuisine deposited the official dimensions of the perfect tagliatella at the Chamber of C o m m e r c e , w i t h a g o l d model still sitting today in the Palazzo della Mercanzia. Cooked, the strip should be eight millimeters wide, a lit- tle under a third of an inch, but this was, apparently, not precise enough for some- body, because the width was a l s o c a l c u l a t e d a s o n e twelve-thousand-two-hun- dred-and-seventieth of the height of the Asinelli tower. Today, there is perhaps less magic around sfoglia making: for generations the work belonged to the home, w h i c h m e a n t i t b e l o n g e d l a r g e l y t o w o m e n , a n d because nobody was paying them to do it, there was no particular reason for the law to decide what to call them, nor to decide the set of skills they ought to have: in other words, sfoglina is still not a legally recognized profession in Italy. Franco Grillini tried to change this in 2006, when he presented a bill to t h e C h a m b e r o f D e p u t i e s that would have formally recognized both sfogline and sfoglini, complete with train- ing courses and a diploma, b u t t h e p r o p o s a l w e n t nowhere. Restaurants, of course, never needed the Parliament to tell them whether the skill was real, as a story told by Michelin-starred chef Massi- mo Bottura demonstrates: when he arrived at the Trat- toria del Campazzo outside Nonantola in 1987, twenty- four years old and newly in c h a r g e , a l o c a l r e z d o r a c a l l e d L i d i a C r i s t o n i t u r n e d u p i n h e r t h r e e - wheeled Ape and asked if he needed help in the kitchen. S h e w a s a l r e a d y n e a r l y b l i n d . H e s a i d y e s , s h e stayed seven years, and she taught him all about tortelli- ni and ragù. Bologna eventually found its own way of giving the sfogline official recognition. In November 2024, the city awarded them a De.Co., the municipal designation of ori- gin that towns usually attach to a local cheese, a cake, a salume or some other prod- uct they do not want any- body else claiming as their own. Here, unusually, the designation went to a way of working. CNA, the artisans' association that campaigned f o r t h e r e c o g n i t i o n , e s t i - mates that around six hun- dred people still practice the craft in Bologna. In the end, though, locals d o n o t r e a l l y c a r e m u c h about official recognition, because they have a less offi- cial but considerably harder- t o - f a k e t e s t o f w h e t h e r someone is a good sfoglina. A sheet of pasta has been rolled properly only when you can lift it up and see the s a n c t u a r y o f S a n L u c a , standing on its hill south- west of Bologna, through it. You can reproduce a certifi- cate, but that… that is much harder to fake. FRANCESCA BEZZONE A sfoglina at work with freshly cut tagliatelle, one of the classic shapes made from hand-rolled sfoglia (Photo: Dmfrancesco/Dreamstime.com) LA BUONA TAVOLA RECIPES COOKING TIPS SEASONAL DISHES "Can you make the sfoglia?" Emilia's sfogline and the art of the rolling pin

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