Pizza di Pasqua al formaggio

The story

Despite the name, pizza di Pasqua is not flat. It is a tall, round loaf of egg dough packed with grated and diced cheese, baked in a tall round mold. In the Marche it is also called crescia, from the way the dough grows as it rises. The oldest known written recipe is a manuscript titled Memorie delle cresce di Pasqua fatte nel 1848, kept by the nuns of the monastery of Santa Maria Maddalena in Serra de' Conti, near Ancona. It was baked on Holy Thursday or Good Friday and could not be eaten until Lent was over. Families once baked dozens at a time in ovens booked in advance, and old recipes called for 40 eggs, one for each day of Lent. In Marche towns such as Urbisaglia it is eaten at Easter lunch and on the Easter Monday picnic with ciauscolo, a soft spreadable salami. In Rome it is a fixture of the Easter breakfast, a late-morning spread around 11 with corallina salami and colored hard-boiled eggs. Bake it a day or two ahead and serve it with Italian salami and a bowl of eggs.