Italian Sardinian Layered Carasau Bread | Pane Frattau con Brodo di Pecora
Updated: Sep 13
Every version of pane frattau stands or falls on the liquid that softens the bread, and in this one that liquid is brodo di pecora, the slow simmered broth of adult sheep that Sardinian kitchens have always kept on the back of the stove. It is not a background ingredient here. It is the seasoning, the sauce and the structure all at once. Pane carasau is baked twice and carries almost no moisture of its own, so whatever it absorbs in those few seconds of contact becomes the flavour of the finished plate. Dip it in water and you get wet bread. Dip it in a broth built from bone in sheep shoulder and neck, skimmed patiently and reduced until it coats a spoon, and the bread comes out tasting of pasture, fat and salt.
Alberto Piso works the dish the way a shepherd household would: one animal, one pot, several meals. The meat that gives the broth its body is served separately or shredded back into the sauce, and the broth itself is portioned out over two or three days. What matters technically is the balance between salinity, gelatin and fat. Aged Pecorino Sardo is already an aggressive salt source, so the broth is salted late and lightly. The gelatin from collar and shank bones gives the softened sheets enough viscosity to hold their shape under a fork. The fat is the variable a cook actually controls, and most of this recipe is about deciding how much of it to leave in.
Serves 4. Prep: 30 minutes. Broth: 3 hours 30 minutes plus overnight chilling. Assembly and cook: 35 minutes. Total: about 4 hours 35 minutes active and overnight rest.
The Story
Brodo di pecora is the direct product of Sardinian transhumance economics. A ewe that has stopped producing enough milk is worth little on the meat market, because its flesh is lean, dark and tough compared with lamb. In the interior of the island, from Barbagia through the Marghine and the Goceano, that animal was never wasted. It went into the pot whole, cut across the bone, and cooked for hours until the connective tissue surrendered. The result is the island's two great pastoral preparations: pecora in cappotto, in which the meat is served in its own broth with onion and potato, and the broth itself, which was strained off and kept for everything else, including pane frattau.
The bread comes from the same economy. Pane carasau was baked in large batches, dried until it would keep for months, and carried by shepherds who spent weeks away from the village. It needed rehydrating, and on the pasture what was available for rehydrating it was the cooking liquid from whatever animal was in the pot. The verb frattau, in Sardinian, refers to the grated cheese scattered over the top. The name records the cheese, but the technique records the broth, and older cooks in Ollolai, Orgosolo and Fonni will still tell you that a frattau made with water instead of brodo is not a frattau at all but a way of using up stale bread.
The dish moved into town kitchens and eventually into restaurants during the twentieth century, and that is where the vegetable broth version appeared, driven partly by convenience and partly by Friday abstinence. Both versions are legitimate and both are eaten across the island today. But the pastoral original is the one that explains why the recipe exists. It was assembled at the point where three shepherd staples met on the same plate: dried bread, aged sheep cheese and the broth from the animal that produced both the milk and the meat. The egg was added last, when there were hens near the house.
Ingredients
Main Components
Sheep shoulder on the bone, cut across into thick pieces, 2 lb (900 g)
Sheep neck or collar, cut into rounds, 1 lb (450 g)
Cold water, 4 qt (3.8 l)
Pane carasau, artisanal, 6 large sheets, about 10 oz (280 g)
Ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or whole canned tomatoes, 1 lb 5 oz (600 g)
Pecorino Sardo, aged at least 10 months, finely grated, 6 oz (180 g)
Very fresh eggs, 4 to 6
Additional Ingredients
Yellow onion for the broth, halved through the root, 1 large
Carrot for the broth, 1 medium
Celery stalk with leaves, 1
Flat leaf parsley stems, 6
Bay leaves, 2
Black peppercorns, 8
Wild fennel fronds, 1 small handful
White onion for the sauce, finely chopped, 1 small
Garlic clove, lightly crushed, 1
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tablespoons (45 ml)
Fresh basil leaves, 8
Fine sea salt, about 2 teaspoons (12 g) total, added late
Freshly ground black pepper
Optional Components
Dried myrtle sprig for the broth, 1
Tomato paste, 1 teaspoon (5 g)
White wine vinegar for the poaching water, 1 tablespoon (15 ml)
Extra grated Pecorino Sardo for the table, 2 oz (60 g)
Preparation: Base Components
Put the shoulder and neck pieces into a tall pot and cover them with the 4 qt (3.8 l) of cold water. Cold is not a detail. Starting cold lets albumin and blood proteins leach out slowly and coagulate into a loose grey raft at the surface, where you can lift them off. Starting hot seals those proteins inside the meat, and they later break up into the fine suspension that turns broth cloudy and slightly bitter. Do not brown the meat first. A frattau broth should be pale gold and clean, not roasted, because a dark caramelised broth fights the tomato and flattens the cheese.
Bring the pot up over medium low heat and give it a full 40 minutes to reach a bare tremble at around 180°F (82°C). Skim continuously through this stage. The first foam is grey and coarse and must go. Once it stops rising, add the halved onion, carrot, celery, parsley stems, bay, peppercorns and the myrtle sprig if you are using it, and hold the pot between 180°F and 190°F (82°C and 88°C) for 3 hours. It must never boil. A rolling boil emulsifies sheep fat into the liquid, and sheep fat emulsified into broth is the single most common reason people say they dislike mutton: it turns waxy on the palate and coats the tongue for an hour afterwards.
Add salt only in the last 30 minutes, and add half of what you think you need. You are going to reduce this liquid and then serve it with 6 oz (180 g) of aged pecorino, which carries roughly 1.5 to 2 percent salt of its own. Strain the broth through a fine sieve lined with damp muslin, chill it uncovered until cold, then overnight. The fat sets into a firm white cap you can lift off in one piece. Keep about 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of it and discard the rest. That small reserved amount goes back into the pot and gives the finished dish its pastoral aroma without the waxy coating.
Preparation: Assembly
Make the tomato sauce first, and make it lean, because the broth is already carrying fat and gelatin. Warm the olive oil in a wide pan over medium low heat, sweat the chopped white onion with a pinch of salt for 8 minutes until translucent but not coloured, add the crushed garlic for 1 minute, then the tomatoes and the teaspoon of tomato paste if the tomatoes are pale. Simmer for 25 minutes until the sauce mounds slightly on the spoon. Season carefully and pull it off the heat with the basil leaves torn in. Taste it against a pinch of the grated pecorino, not on its own, so you judge the salt where it will actually land.
Now set up the broth for dipping. Pour the degreased broth into a wide shallow pan, add back the 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of reserved sheep fat, and reduce it by about a quarter until it just coats the back of a spoon. Then bring it down and hold it at 175°F to 185°F (80°C to 85°C). Hot enough to soften the bread instantly, not so hot that it cooks it. Check the seasoning of the reduced broth one final time: it should taste a shade under seasoned on its own, because the bread will concentrate it as it absorbs.
Break the pane carasau into pieces the size of your serving plates. Warm the plates properly, to about 140°F (60°C). Working one plate at a time, hold a sheet flat in the broth with tongs for 3 to 5 seconds only, lift, let it drain for a second, and lay it down. Spread a spoonful of tomato sauce, scatter grated pecorino, and repeat for three layers, finishing with sauce and a heavier dusting of cheese.
Preparation: Finishing
Poach the eggs while the last plate is being layered, not before. Fill a saucepan with 3 in (8 cm) of water, bring it to a bare simmer at about 180°F (82°C), and add the spoonful of white wine vinegar only if your eggs are more than a few days old. Slide each egg in from a small cup and cook for 3 to 4 minutes: the white should be fully set and the yolk completely fluid. Lift with a slotted spoon and rest the egg for a moment on a folded cloth so poaching water does not run onto the plate and dilute the broth you worked to concentrate.
Do not poach the eggs in the sheep broth itself. It sounds appealing and it is a mistake. The albumin that escapes from the white clouds the broth immediately, and the gelatin in the broth makes the white spread into ragged veils rather than gathering. Keep the two liquids separate and the broth stays clear for the next plate.
Set the poached egg in the centre of the top layer while everything is still hot, grind black pepper over it, and add a final spoonful of hot broth around the base of the stack so the lower sheets stay supple until the plate reaches the table. That last spoonful is the difference between a frattau that is still moist at the fourth forkful and one that has gone dry underneath the cheese. Take the plate out immediately. This dish waits for nobody, and a delay of three minutes changes its texture noticeably.
Final Plating and Presentation
Use a wide shallow bowl rather than a flat plate. The broth that surrounds the base needs somewhere to gather, and a rim keeps it from running to the edge and cooling. A bowl of about 10 in (25 cm) across with a shallow well suits a three layer stack for one person. Warm it thoroughly. A cold bowl pulls the broth below 140°F (60°C) within a minute and the pecorino stops melting into the sauce, sitting instead as dry grains on top.
Build the stack slightly off centre and let the sheets sit at different angles rather than stacking them into a neat cylinder. Pane carasau breaks along irregular lines and the honest look of the dish comes from those uneven edges catching the light. The poached egg goes in the hollow at the top, with the darkest, most reduced spoonful of tomato sauce visible around it. Scatter the final cheese while the surface is hot enough to soften it at the edges.
Finish with a very small amount of extra virgin olive oil, a few drops only, around the base of the stack where it meets the broth. It reads as gloss and it carries aroma, but any more than that and it floats on the reserved sheep fat already in the broth, giving a double slick that muddies the flavour. A single basil leaf is traditional in some households and pointless in others. Add it only if the tomatoes are fully ripe and the sauce is sweet enough to carry it. Send the plate out with a spoon as well as a fork, because the broth at the bottom is the best part and diners should be able to reach it.
Professional Technique
The professional variable in this dish is fat management, and it is worth being precise about it. Sheep fat has a melting point of roughly 111°F to 120°F (44°C to 49°C), noticeably higher than beef and far higher than pork. That is why it congeals on a cooling plate and why restaurants that serve mutton badly leave a film on the palate. The overnight chill and the removal of the fat cap solve the problem physically. Reintroducing a measured 2 tablespoons (30 ml) restores the aroma compounds that live in the fat, branched chain fatty acids that give sheep its identity, without leaving enough volume to set. Serving on a bowl warmed to 140°F (60°C) keeps that residual fat above its melting point right through the meal.
The second variable is gelatin concentration. Collar and shank bones are rich in collagen, and 3 hours at 180°F to 190°F (82°C to 88°C) converts enough of it that the cold broth sets to a soft jelly. That is your indicator: if the chilled broth does not wobble, it will not give the bread body, and you should reduce further. Aim for a broth that holds a light set in the refrigerator but pours freely when warm. Reducing by a further quarter at service concentrates both the gelatin and the glutamates, and it is this viscosity, not the salt, that makes softened carasau feel substantial rather than soggy.
Third, control the dipping window by feel rather than by clock across the whole batch. Sheets from the outside of a package are drier than sheets from the centre, and a thicker artisanal sheet may need 6 seconds where a thin industrial one needs 2. Hold the sheet by one edge and watch the surface: the moment the dry matte look turns to a soft sheen and the sheet begins to yield under the tongs, it is done. Beyond that point the starch network collapses and no amount of careful layering will bring the structure back.
Texture and Moisture Control
A correct pane frattau has three distinct moisture zones and keeping them distinct is the whole game. The bottom sheet sits in broth and should be fully soft, almost custard like. The middle sheets are moistened but still have a slight resistance, the sort of yield you get from fresh lasagne rather than from bread pudding. The top sheet is only lightly dipped and keeps a faint crackle at the edges where it was not fully submerged. If all three zones taste the same, the dish has been over dipped or left standing too long.
Sheep broth behaves differently from vegetable broth in every one of those zones, and this is the practical heart of the recipe. Vegetable broth is thin, watery in body, and carries its flavour in volatile aromatics that dissipate as the plate cools. It passes straight through the porous structure of carasau and the bread goes from dry to saturated with very little middle ground, which is why vegetable versions so often turn to paste. Sheep broth is viscous with dissolved gelatin, and that viscosity slows the rate of capillary absorption. The bread has a usable window of several seconds rather than an instant, and once softened it holds a coherent sheet instead of tearing. On the tongue the gelatin gives a rounded, slightly sticky body that carries the pecorino salt, whereas vegetable broth leaves the cheese exposed and the dish tastes sharper and flatter at the same time.
Salinity is the other control. The reduced broth should land around 0.8 to 1 percent salt, clearly less than a soup you would drink, because 6 oz (180 g) of aged pecorino across four plates adds a great deal more. Under season the broth and the dish tastes hollow under the cheese. Over season it and the salt from two sources stacks up and nothing else can be tasted. The tomato sauce is your buffer: keep it slightly sweet and barely salted, and it sits between the two salty elements and holds them apart.
Professional Mise en Place
This dish is assembled at speed and cannot be held, so almost everything has to be finished and waiting before the first sheet is dipped. The broth is the only element made in advance and it is made a full day ahead. Everything else lines up along the pass in the order it is used: broth, bread, sauce, cheese, egg.
Equipment and Tools
Tall stockpot, 8 qt (7.5 l), narrow enough that 4 qt (3.8 l) of water covers the meat
Fine mesh sieve and a square of damp muslin for straining
Wide shallow pan for reducing and holding the broth at service
Probe thermometer, essential for holding 180°F to 190°F (82°C to 88°C)
Long tongs for dipping the carasau sheets
Slotted spoon and a small cup for the eggs
Microplane or fine grater for the Pecorino Sardo
Four wide shallow bowls, warmed to about 140°F (60°C)
Advance Preparation Steps
Day one: simmer, strain and chill the broth uncovered, then refrigerate overnight
Day two morning: lift and discard the fat cap, reserving 2 tablespoons (30 ml)
Day two morning: cook the tomato sauce, cool and hold refrigerated
Up to 2 hours before service: grate the pecorino and keep it covered at room temperature
30 minutes before: reduce the broth by a quarter and hold it at 175°F to 185°F (80°C to 85°C)
20 minutes before: break the carasau into plate sized pieces and stack them dry
Serving Setup
Bowls warming in a low oven at 175°F (80°C) with the door ajar
Poaching water at a bare simmer, set up only when the first bowl is being layered
Sauce warm but not hot, in a bowl with its own spoon
Cheese in an open dish within reach of the dipping pan
Pepper mill and the small oil bottle at the pass, nothing else
Chef Tips
Ask the butcher for an adult ewe rather than lamb. Lamb bones give a delicate broth that disappears under the pecorino. The whole point of brodo di pecora is that it is strong enough to stand up to an aged sheep cheese, and only mature meat delivers that.
Chill the broth uncovered before refrigerating it. Covering a warm pot traps steam, the condensation drips back and dilutes the surface, and the fat cap sets thin and broken instead of lifting off in one clean disc.
Taste the broth against a pinch of pecorino, never on its own. Judged alone it will always seem under salted, and correcting it at that moment is what ruins the finished plate.
Freeze the broth in 1 cup (240 ml) portions. One cup softens roughly six sheets, which is one serving, so you can make a single plate on a weeknight without thawing the whole batch.
Common Mistakes
Boiling the broth instead of holding it below a simmer: this is the error that produces the greasy, muttony broth people remember badly. A rolling boil mechanically emulsifies sheep fat into the liquid in droplets too fine to skim or to chill out later. Once emulsified it cannot be removed, and because sheep fat melts above body temperature it coats the palate. Use a probe, hold 180°F to 190°F (82°C to 88°C), and accept that the surface should barely move.
Salting the broth early and to taste: salt concentrates as the liquid reduces over 3 hours and then again at service, and the pecorino adds a second load on the plate. A broth seasoned correctly at hour one is inedibly salty by the time it reaches the bread. Add half the salt in the final 30 minutes and make the last adjustment only after reduction.
Dipping all the bread in advance: softened carasau does not stop absorbing. Sheets held on a tray for even two minutes go slack and tear when lifted, and the stack collapses into a single wet mass with no layers. Dip one sheet, place it, dress it, and only then dip the next.
Substituting vegetable broth and expecting the same dish: it is a legitimate variation but it is not a substitution. Without gelatin the bread saturates instantly and turns to paste, and without the meaty depth the pecorino dominates. If you must use vegetable broth, thicken the flavour with dried porcini and a strip of parmesan rind, dip for half the time, and expect a lighter, sharper plate.
Wine or Beverage Pairing
The pairing problem here is salt on top of salt, with a soft fatty egg and a gelatinous broth underneath. You need acidity to cut the pecorino, moderate tannin at most so it does not clash with the salt, and enough body to meet the broth rather than vanish beside it. Sardinian wines solve this naturally, which is unsurprising given that they grew up alongside the dish.
Cannonau di Sardegna DOC: The classic answer and the right one. Its tannins are soft and dusty rather than gripping, so they do not turn metallic against the salt of the aged pecorino, while the ripe red fruit and Mediterranean scrub aromatics echo the myrtle and wild fennel in the broth. Its warmth and glycerol body match the gelatin, meeting the dish weight for weight instead of being swamped by it.
Vermentino di Gallura DOCG: For anyone who wants contrast rather than echo. The bracing citrus acidity slices straight through the sheep fat and resets the palate between forkfuls, and the faintly bitter almond finish answers the salty edge of the cheese. Its saline, granite driven minerality sits comfortably beside a broth that is itself savoury and slightly salty.
Campidano di Terralba DOC: Made from Bovale, this is a lighter bodied red with brisk acidity and gentle tannin, and it handles the tomato in the sauce better than a fuller wine would. Serve it slightly cool, around 57°F (14°C), and it refreshes the palate the way a rosé does while still having enough savoury red fruit to sit with the sheep meat character of the broth.
Nuragus di Cagliari DOC: The everyday white of the Campidano plain and the most quietly effective option on this list. It is low in alcohol, high in fresh acidity and almost neutral in aroma, so it cleanses without competing. Where a more aromatic white would fight the pecorino, Nuragus simply carries the salt away and leaves the broth and the egg yolk in the foreground.
Alghero DOC: The Catalan corner of Sardinia offers versions across several styles, and the white and rosé bottlings work particularly well here. They tend to have riper fruit and a rounder texture than Gallura Vermentino, which suits the richness of the poached yolk, while retaining enough acidity to keep the layered cheese from building up on the palate.
If you are not drinking wine, serve cold water with a squeeze of lemon rather than anything sweet. A sweet drink beside this much salt is unpleasant, and the acidity of the lemon performs the same cleansing job as a Vermentino would.
Storage and Make Ahead Options
The broth is the make ahead element and it improves for it. Refrigerated with its fat cap intact it keeps 5 days, because the sealed layer of set fat protects the liquid underneath. Once you lift the cap, use it within 2 days. Frozen in 1 cup (240 ml) portions it keeps 3 months with no loss of gelatin strength. Thaw it in the refrigerator overnight, never in a microwave, which boils the edges and dulls the flavour. The tomato sauce holds 4 days refrigerated or 2 months frozen, and the cooked meat from the broth, shredded and moistened with a little of its own liquid, keeps 3 days and makes an excellent filling for the following day.
Assembled pane frattau does not keep. There is no method that restores it, because the bread cannot be dried out again once softened, and reheating simply turns the layers into a uniform paste with a rubbery egg on top. If you have leftovers, treat them as a different dish: break the stack up, put it in a small baking dish, add a ladle of hot broth and more grated pecorino, and bake at 375°F (190°C) for 15 minutes until the top browns. It is good, but it is a gratin, not a frattau. Better still, make only the number of plates you intend to eat and keep the components separate.
Nutrition Information
Per serving, based on 4 servings including one poached egg:
Calories, about 620 kcal
Total Fat, 30 g
Saturated Fat, 13 g
Trans Fat, 0.5 g
Unsaturated Fat, 15 g
Cholesterol, 245 mg
Sodium, 1180 mg
Total Carbohydrates, 54 g
Fiber, 4 g
Total Sugars, 7 g
Added Sugars, 0 g
Protein, 32 g
Lactose, about 1 g
Key micronutrients: calcium about 480 mg, phosphorus 490 mg, zinc 4.5 mg, iron 4 mg, selenium 35 mcg, vitamin B12 1.8 mcg, vitamin A 210 mcg, potassium 620 mg
Allergens: wheat and gluten from the pane carasau, milk from the Pecorino Sardo, egg from the poached egg. Pecorino Sardo is aged and therefore very low in lactose but it is not lactose free. Sodium is high by design, since salinity is a defining feature of the dish, and can be moderated by reducing the cheese to 4 oz (120 g) and salting the broth even more lightly. All figures are estimates and will vary with the fatness of the sheep, how much fat you return to the broth and the age of the cheese.
About the Recipe
This version of pane frattau is deliberately built around the broth rather than around the bread or the cheese, because the broth is where the dish comes from and where most home versions go wrong. It follows Alberto Piso's practice of making one long simmered pot of brodo di pecora and then spending it across several meals, which is how the preparation actually worked in the pastoral villages of central Sardinia. Everything technical in the method, the cold water start, the patient skimming, the temperature ceiling, the overnight chill and the measured return of fat, exists to make a strong sheep broth clean enough to eat by the spoonful and viscous enough to hold the bread together.
Summary
Simmer bone in sheep shoulder and neck from cold water, skimming hard, never above 190°F (88°C), for 3 hours with a modest bouquet of onion, carrot, celery, bay and wild fennel. Salt only at the end and salt lightly, because aged Pecorino Sardo brings a great deal of its own. Strain, chill overnight, lift off the fat cap and return just 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of it. Reduce the broth by a quarter at service and hold it at 175°F to 185°F (80°C to 85°C).
Then work fast: dip each sheet of pane carasau for 3 to 5 seconds only, layer it on a warmed bowl with lean tomato sauce and grated pecorino, three layers high, crown it with a soft poached egg and spoon a little more hot broth around the base. The gelatin in the broth is what keeps the layers distinct, the reserved fat is what carries the pastoral aroma, and the restraint with salt is what lets both be tasted. That is the difference between this plate and the same dish made with vegetable broth, and it is worth the day it takes.
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