Sfogliata Napoletana Salata
A golden square puff-pastry tart topped with cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, black olives and basil
This is the dish you make when people are coming and you have fifteen minutes. Two sheets of ready-made puff pastry, stacked one on the other for a base that stays crisp instead of going soggy under the topping — that is the one Neapolitan trick worth knowing here. On top go halved cherry tomatoes, torn mozzarella, black olives and a heavy hand of oregano, and into the oven it goes until the edges puff up golden.
It lives in the same world as the parigina and the bakery rosticceria, and it has a street-food cousin: the sfogliatella salata, which takes the shell shape of the famous sweet sfogliatella and fills it with savoury things instead — sausage and friarielli, ragù, or ricotta and salami. At a party in Italy this tart is almost always on the table, cut into squares, somewhere between an antipasto and something you eat standing up with a glass in your hand.
Tap to enlarge — Sfogliata napoletana salata: il doppio guscio, gli ingredienti, le varianti
Recipe — Sfogliata Napoletana Salata
Serves 4–6 · 15 minutes prep · 30–40 minutes baking
- 2 sheets puff pastry pasta sfoglia, ready-rolled
- 15–20 cherry tomatoes halved
- 250 g mozzarella well-drained, torn or diced
- Black olives a generous handful
- Fresh basil
- Dried oregano
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Salt
The variations are all about the cheese and the cured meat: smoked provola and Gaeta olives for a more Campanian version; sausage and friarielli baked inside for something heartier. Vegetarian as written, and genuinely better at room temperature an hour later — which is exactly why it is buffet and picnic food.
