Italian Friulian Gubana Cake | Gubana Friulana
Updated: 6 days ago
Gubana is a coiled cake from the eastern edge of Friuli Venezia Giulia, from the narrow valleys of the Natisone river that run up to the Slovenian border above Cividale del Friuli. A rich egg and butter yeast dough is rolled out until it is almost transparent, covered with a dense paste of walnuts, raisins, pine nuts and candied peel, rolled into a long rope, and then wound round on itself into a flat spiral that goes into a round tin and rises again before baking. Cut across, every slice shows the same dark and pale spiral repeated from the outside to the centre.
It is not a quick cake and it was never meant to be. The dough is leavened in two stages, the filling is made a day ahead so the walnuts and the dried fruit can exchange moisture and settle, and the assembled spiral needs a slow final rise before it sees any heat. A gubana made in one afternoon from a single dough is a perfectly pleasant sweet bread. A gubana made over two days is something else entirely, dense and moist and almost chewy, with a filling that reads as one thing rather than as a handful of chopped nuts.
The recipe below is the classic home version from the Valli del Natisone, built on leavened dough rather than the puff pastry the town pastry shops later adopted. There is grappa in it, because there always is, but only enough to soak the raisins and carry the aromatics. The Friulian habit of pouring a glass of grappa over the cut slice is a separate pleasure and a matter of personal taste.
Yield: one 9 inch (23 cm) spiral cake, 12 slices. Prep: 1 hour. Rising: about 5 hours in total. Bake: 50 minutes. Rest: 1 day for the filling, 1 day for the baked cake. Difficulty: advanced. Course: dessert. Region: Friuli Venezia Giulia, Valli del Natisone and Cividale del Friuli.
The Story
The first record of gubana is a banquet. In 1409 Pope Gregory XII was in Cividale del Friuli, where he had summoned a council, and the chronicles of the reception laid on for him list a cake called gubana among the dishes served. Cividale was no small town in which to find such a thing. Founded as Forum Iulii, it had been the capital of the Lombard Duchy of Friuli and the seat of a patriarchate, and it gave the whole region its name. A sweet substantial enough to be recorded at a papal table in 1409 had already been made in those valleys for some time.
The name comes from across the border. In Slovene guba means a fold or a pleat, and the Valli del Natisone are the heart of what Friulians call the Slavia Friulana, a group of mountain valleys where Slovene dialects have been spoken alongside Friulian for more than a thousand years. Gubana belongs to a family of rolled and filled festive cakes that runs east and north through that whole linguistic zone: potica in Slovenia, putizza and presnitz in Trieste, and a dozen village variants in between. The walnut, raisin and honey filling is the shared ancestor of all of them.
In the valleys gubana was a cake for occasions, not for Sundays. It was baked for Easter and Christmas, for weddings, for the feast day of the village church, and above all for the visit of the priest or the bishop, which is why so many families kept their own quantities in their heads and argued about them. The dough was made with whatever the household had in quantity, which in those valleys meant eggs and butter, and the filling with what the woods and the trade routes gave: walnuts from trees that stood in every yard, pine nuts, raisins and candied citron bought in, honey, and grappa distilled locally from the pomace.
Two schools have coexisted since the nineteenth century. The home version, the one in this recipe, uses a leavened dough and comes out of the oven looking like a fat golden snail. The pastry shop version, developed in Cividale and now the one most often sold in tins across Italy, uses puff pastry and produces a lighter, flakier, drier cake. Both are legitimate and both are called gubana. The valley families will tell you only one of them is, and they mean the leavened one.
Ingredients
For the starter
Bread flour, 3/4 cup (100 g)
Whole milk, lukewarm, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Active dry yeast, 2 tsp (7 g), or fresh yeast, 3/4 oz (20 g)
Granulated sugar, 1 tsp (4 g)
For the dough
Bread flour, 2 1/2 cups (330 g)
Granulated sugar, 1/3 cup (70 g)
Unsalted butter, soft, 7 tbsp (100 g)
Egg yolks, large, 3
Whole egg, large, 1
Whole milk, lukewarm, 1/4 cup (60 ml)
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1 lemon
Finely grated orange zest, from 1 orange
Fine sea salt, 3/4 tsp (4 g)
Vanilla extract, 1 tsp (5 ml)
For the filling
Shelled walnuts, 10 oz (280 g)
Golden raisins, 5 oz (140 g)
Grappa, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Pine nuts, 2 1/2 oz (70 g)
Candied orange peel, finely diced, 2 1/2 oz (70 g)
Candied citron, finely diced, 1 3/4 oz (50 g)
Dry amaretti or savoiardi biscuits, crushed to crumbs, 2 oz (60 g)
Granulated sugar, 1/3 cup (70 g)
Honey, preferably acacia, 2 tbsp (40 g)
Unsalted butter, melted, 3 tbsp (45 g)
Whole egg, large, 1
Ground cinnamon, 1 tsp (2.5 g)
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1/4 tsp
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1 lemon
Fine sea salt, 1 small pinch
For finishing
Egg yolk beaten with 1 tbsp (15 ml) milk, for the wash
Coarse or pearl sugar, 2 tbsp (25 g)
Melted butter, 1 tbsp (15 g), for brushing the cake warm
Preparation
Make the filling a day before anything else.
Warm the grappa slightly, pour it over the raisins and leave them to soak for at least 2 hours or overnight. Toast the walnuts at 325°F (165°C) for 8 minutes and the pine nuts for 4 minutes, watching both, and cool them completely. Chop the walnuts by hand to the size of small peas rather than grinding them, because a food processor turns them to oily paste and the filling loses its texture. Combine the nuts, drained raisins, pine nuts, candied peels, biscuit crumbs, sugar, honey, melted butter, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon zest and salt, mix thoroughly, cover and refrigerate overnight. The rest is not optional: the crumbs absorb the free moisture and the paste goes from loose and wet to spreadable and cohesive.
Start the dough with a sponge.
Whisk the yeast and the teaspoon of sugar into the lukewarm milk and leave it 10 minutes until it foams. Stir in the 3/4 cup (100 g) of bread flour to make a thick batter, cover the bowl and leave it somewhere warm, around 78°F (26°C), for 45 minutes, until it has visibly domed and is full of bubbles. This first stage builds yeast population and acidity before the fat and sugar of the main dough arrive, and both of those slow yeast down badly. Skipping it gives a dough that takes twice as long to rise and bakes heavier.
Build the enriched dough and knead it long.
Add the remaining flour, the sugar, the yolks, the whole egg, the lukewarm milk, both zests, the vanilla and the salt to the sponge and mix to a shaggy mass. Knead for 8 minutes in a stand mixer on medium or 15 minutes by hand, then add the soft butter in four additions, waiting each time until the previous piece has disappeared. Keep going until the dough is smooth, elastic and shiny and pulls cleanly away from the side of the bowl, about another 8 minutes. It should be soft and slightly tacky but never sticky. This is the longest kneading in the recipe and it is what lets the dough be rolled thin later without tearing.
Give the dough a full first rise.
Shape the dough into a ball, put it in a lightly buttered bowl, cover it and leave it at around 78°F (26°C) until doubled, which takes 2 to 2 1/2 hours with this much butter and sugar in it. Do not judge by the clock, judge by volume and by the dent test: a finger pressed 1/2 inch (1 cm) into the surface should leave a mark that fills back slowly and only partly. When it is ready, knock it back gently and refrigerate it for 30 minutes. Cold dough rolls thinner and handles better than warm dough.
Roll the dough into a long thin rectangle.
On a lightly floured cloth or a large board, roll the chilled dough into a rectangle roughly 20 by 14 inches (50 by 35 cm) and about 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick. Work from the centre outward in all four directions and lift the sheet occasionally so it does not stick. Thin is the whole point: the ratio of filling to dough is what makes gubana taste of walnuts rather than of bread, and a sheet rolled to twice this thickness will give a cake with pale doughy bands running through it.
Spread the filling and leave a clean border.
Take the filling out of the refrigerator 20 minutes ahead so it spreads without tearing the dough. Spread it evenly over the sheet with an offset spatula, right to the edges on the two short sides, but leave a bare strip about 1 inch (2.5 cm) wide along the long edge furthest from you. That strip is what seals the roll. Press the filling down lightly so it adheres rather than sitting loose on the surface, because loose filling shifts during rolling and leaves a hollow at the centre of the spiral.
Roll it into a tight rope and seal it.
Starting from the long edge nearest you, roll the sheet up firmly and evenly into a long cylinder, keeping constant pressure with both hands and pushing the ends in as you go so they do not run ahead. Brush the bare strip with a little water and press the seam closed along its full length, then pinch both ends shut. Roll the finished rope gently under your palms to even out its thickness. A slack roll gives wide gaps between the coils and a cake that falls apart when sliced.
Coil the rope into a spiral in the tin.
Butter a 9 inch (23 cm) round tin with a high side and line the base with parchment. Lift the rope carefully, seam side down, and wind it into a flat spiral in the tin, starting at the outside edge and working inward, leaving about 1/2 inch (1 cm) between the coils. The gap matters, because the coils expand and press against each other as the cake proves and bakes, and a spiral wound tight from the start will buckle upward instead of staying flat. Tuck the finishing end underneath the last coil.
Prove the shaped cake slowly.
Cover the tin loosely and leave it at cool room temperature, around 70°F (21°C), for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until the coils have swollen together and the gaps have almost closed. This second rise is deliberately slower and cooler than the first, because a heavy filled spiral proved too warm will over expand at the seams and split them open in the oven. The cake is ready when a gentle press on the top coil leaves a shallow mark that does not spring straight back.
Bake it long at a moderate heat.
Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C) with a rack in the lower third. Brush the surface carefully with the egg wash, avoiding the gaps so it does not glue the coils together, and scatter the coarse sugar over the top. Bake for 20 minutes, then lower the heat to 325°F (165°C) and bake a further 30 minutes, covering the top loosely with foil as soon as it is properly golden. The cake is done when a skewer pushed into the middle of a coil comes out clean and the internal temperature reads 195°F (90°C). A filled spiral this dense needs the full time at moderate heat, because a hot fast bake colours the crust long before the centre has set.
Cool it, brush it and let it mature.
Leave the cake in the tin for 20 minutes, brush the warm surface with melted butter, then turn it out onto a rack and cool completely, which takes at least 3 hours. Then wrap it in parchment and a clean cloth and leave it at room temperature for a full day before cutting. Gubana improves dramatically overnight as the moisture from the filling redistributes into the crumb, and a cake cut while still warm will crumble at the spiral and taste noticeably drier than the same cake cut the following afternoon.
Plating
Gubana is served in wedges cut from the whole cake, and the spiral is the reason. Cut it like a round loaf, from the centre outward, so that every wedge carries the coils in section and shows the alternating bands of pale crumb and dark filling from the point to the crust. Slices between 3/4 inch and 1 inch (2 to 2.5 cm) thick hold together best. Use a long serrated knife here and saw gently, which is the opposite of what a cream filled tart needs, because the walnut pieces in the filling will tear under a straight downward press.
Serve it at room temperature, never chilled and never warm. Cold flattens the perfume of the citrus zest and the grappa completely, and warmth makes the filling greasy from the butter and the walnut oil. A plain white plate, two wedges leaning against each other, and nothing else. This is a cake that does not want cream, custard or fruit alongside it, and in Friuli it never gets any.
The traditional accompaniment is a small glass of grappa, and in the valleys the older custom is more direct still: the grappa is poured straight over the slice on the plate and soaked up by the crumb. Offer it separately and let the table decide. A dusting of confectioners sugar over the top of the whole cake before it goes to the table is normal and looks right on the coils, but it is optional and it is the only decoration this cake has ever accepted.
Professional Technique
The defining technical problem of gubana is that a heavily enriched dough has to be rolled thinner than an enriched dough normally can be, and then asked to carry more than its own weight in filling without tearing or collapsing. Everything in the method serves that. The long kneading past the point where the dough merely comes together develops a gluten network strong enough to be stretched to 1/8 inch (3 mm) and still hold. The refrigeration before rolling firms the butter so it lubricates the sheet rather than smearing through it. And the two stage leavening gets the yeast established before the fat and sugar can suppress it, since both compete for water and both slow fermentation sharply above about 10 percent of flour weight.
The second technique is the construction of the spiral itself, which is a piece of geometry rather than decoration. As the rope is wound from the outside inward, every coil has to be laid with a deliberate gap, because the whole spiral expands during proving and again during the first ten minutes in the oven. Wound tight, the coils have nowhere to go but upward, and the cake domes, splits along its seams and bakes unevenly. Wound with the gap, they meet each other gently, fuse into a single flat disc and produce the clean concentric section that a gubana is judged on when it is cut.
The third is the filling chemistry, and it explains the overnight rest that most published versions leave out. Freshly mixed, the filling holds a great deal of free liquid from the egg, the honey, the melted butter and the soaked raisins, and free liquid spread onto thin dough will soak into it and make the inner surface gummy. The crushed dry biscuits are there specifically to absorb that liquid, and they need hours of contact to do it. Rested, the same mixture is thick enough to spread and stay where it is put, and the moisture it eventually releases does so in the oven, into the crumb, where it is wanted.
The fourth is the bake itself, a descending temperature curve rather than a single setting. The opening 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C) gives the oven spring that lifts the coils and sets their shape. Dropping to 325°F (165°C) for the remaining half hour lets heat reach the centre of a cake that is dense, wet and poorly conductive, without driving the crust past golden into bitter. The internal target of 195°F (90°C) is the real test, since a skewer can come out clean from a coil of set filling while the dough beside it is still underbaked.
Texture and Moisture Control
The texture this cake is aiming at is moist and close grained rather than light. The crumb should be tender and slightly chewy, the filling dense and just short of sticky, and the two should read as a single material rather than as bread with something inside it. That comes from the ratio: roughly equal weights of dough and filling, which is far more filling than any ordinary sweet bread carries, and which is only possible because the sheet has been rolled thin enough that no thick band of plain dough ever appears in the section.
Moisture control begins with the raisins. Soaked in grappa they arrive already plump, so they take nothing from the crumb during baking. Added dry they act as tiny sponges inside a hot cake, pulling water out of the dough around them and leaving a ring of dry crumb at every raisin. The walnuts work the opposite way, releasing oil as they heat, which is why chopping them by hand rather than grinding them matters: whole pieces release their oil slowly into the filling, while ground walnut paste releases it immediately and makes the inner dough surface greasy.
Humidity around the proving cake needs watching because the surface is large and exposed. A loose cover of oiled plastic or a damp cloth keeps a skin from forming, and a skin is what makes the coils split rather than stretch in the oven. In a dry kitchen, put the tin in a turned off oven with a bowl of hot water on the shelf below. In a warm humid kitchen, watch the timing instead, because the second rise can finish in barely an hour and an overproved spiral collapses in the centre.
The final moisture movement happens after the cake leaves the oven, and it is the reason for the day of rest. Straight from the tin the filling is hotter and wetter than the crumb around it. Over the next twenty four hours that difference equalises, the crumb softens and takes on the perfume of the citrus and the spice, and the filling firms enough to hold together under a knife. Wrapped in parchment and cloth rather than plastic, the cake loses just enough surface moisture to keep a slight resistance in the crust while the inside goes softer, which is exactly the balance a good gubana has.
Professional Mise en Place
This is a three day project in which almost no single stage is difficult. Day one is the filling and the raisin soak. Day two is the dough, the shaping, the prove and the bake. Day three is when it is eaten. Organising it that way turns a long recipe into three short sessions.
Equipment and tools
Stand mixer with a dough hook, or a large bowl and 25 minutes of patience
9 inch (23 cm) round tin with a side at least 3 inches (7.5 cm) high
Long rolling pin and a large floured cloth or board for the thin sheet
Offset spatula for spreading the filling and a pastry brush for the wash
Instant read thermometer, for the 195°F (90°C) internal target
Parchment, clean cloth and a cool cupboard for the day of rest
Prepared ahead
Raisins soaked in grappa, at least 2 hours and up to 2 days
Nuts toasted and cooled, up to 2 days in a sealed jar
Filling mixed and refrigerated, 1 day ahead and no more than 2
Candied peels diced small, since large pieces tear the thin dough
Tin buttered and lined before the rope is rolled, not after
Service setup
Cake fully cooled and rested wrapped for 24 hours before it is cut
Long serrated knife and a board, not a plate, for portioning
Room temperature service, out of any cupboard 1 hour ahead in winter
Grappa poured into small glasses and offered separately
Confectioners sugar dusted over the whole cake just before it leaves the kitchen
Chef Tips
Taste the walnuts before you commit ten ounces of them to a three day cake. Walnut oil turns rancid faster than almost any other nut oil, and a shop bought bag that has sat warm will taste faintly of old paint, which no amount of sugar, honey or grappa will cover. Buy them where there is turnover, keep them in the freezer if you are not baking immediately, and toast them the day you make the filling.
Weigh the dough and the filling against each other before you spread anything. They should be close to equal, around 1 lb 6 oz (620 g) each. If the filling is much heavier the roll will burst at the seams during proving, and if it is much lighter you have made a sweet bread instead of a gubana. Adjusting at this point means removing two spoonfuls, not starting again.
Roll the sheet on a floured cloth rather than directly on the counter. The cloth lets you lift the whole rectangle by its far edge and use it to help start the roll, which is close to impossible with a sheet this thin and this soft when it is stuck to a hard surface. It is the single trick that separates a tidy tight rope from a torn one, and it is how it has always been done in the valleys.
If the top of the spiral is browning too fast at the twenty minute mark, cover it with foil immediately rather than dropping the oven temperature further. The cake needs the heat at the base to finish the centre, and lowering the whole oven to protect the crust simply means a longer bake and a drier cake. Foil on top and full heat underneath is the right correction.
Common Mistakes
Grinding the walnuts in a food processor. The blade releases the oil and turns the nuts into a dark paste that makes the filling greasy and the dough beside it soggy. Chop them by hand to roughly the size of a pea and accept that it takes ten minutes.
Using the filling the same day it is mixed. It is too wet to spread properly and soaks straight into the thin dough, giving a gummy inner surface and a hollow spiral. The overnight rest is what lets the biscuit crumbs absorb the free liquid.
Rolling the dough too thick. Anything much over 1/8 inch (3 mm) gives thick pale bands of plain dough in the section and shifts the balance of the cake from walnut to bread. Roll it until you can almost see the cloth through it.
Winding the coils tight against each other. With no room to expand, the spiral pushes upward, domes in the middle and splits at the seams in the oven. Leave about 1/2 inch (1 cm) between the coils and let proving close the gaps.
Adding the raisins dry. Unsoaked raisins draw moisture out of the crumb around them as the cake bakes and leave a dry ring at every one. Soak them in warm grappa, or in warm apple juice if there is no grappa, and drain them before mixing.
Baking hot to save time. At 400°F (200°C) the crust is dark before the centre is anywhere near 195°F (90°C), and the result is a burnt outside over raw dough at the middle of the spiral. Moderate heat and a full 50 minutes, with foil if the top gets ahead.
Cutting it the day it is baked. The filling has not settled, the crumb is still releasing steam, and the slice crumbles apart at the coils. Wrap it and wait a day, which is also exactly what is done in Friuli.
Wine Pairing
Ramandolo DOCG: The pairing from the same hills, made from late harvested Verduzzo Friulano a short drive from Cividale, and the one a Friulian family would actually open. It has an unusual grip for a sweet wine, a faint tannin from the thick grape skins that stops it from simply adding sugar to a sweet cake, and its baked apple and honey character sits exactly alongside the raisins and the candied peel.
Colli Orientali del Friuli Picolit DOCG: The rarest and finest sweet wine of Friuli, from a variety whose flowers abort naturally and leave tiny concentrated bunches. It is more delicate and more floral than Ramandolo, with apricot, acacia honey and a long saline finish, and it works best with gubana when the filling has gone lighter on the spice. Pour it at 54°F (12°C) in small measures, because its perfume is the point and cold shuts it down.
Vin Santo del Chianti Classico DOC: A Tuscan answer rather than a local one, and a convincing one because of the nuts. Years in small sealed caratelli under wide temperature swings give it a genuinely oxidative, walnut and dried fig character that meets the walnut filling directly instead of contrasting with it. The high acidity underneath keeps it from piling sweetness onto sweetness.
Moscato di Scanzo DOCG: A tiny passito red from Bergamo made from air dried Moscato di Scanzo grapes, and a genuinely interesting match for a spiced walnut cake. Its aromatics run to rose, dried cherry and cinnamon, which pick up the nutmeg and cinnamon in the filling, while the light tannin gives the pairing a structure that no sweet white can. Serve it at around 61°F (16°C).
Montefalco Sagrantino Passito DOCG: The most powerful option here and the one for a gubana made dark and heavily spiced. Sagrantino carries the highest tannin of any Italian variety, and in the dried grape passito style that tannin arrives alongside sweet blackberry and plum, cutting through the butter and the walnut oil in a way lighter wines cannot. Pour small glasses and only at the end of a long meal.
Storage & Reheating
Gubana keeps better than almost any other Italian cake, which is part of why it was a festival bake in valleys where the oven was lit rarely. Wrapped in parchment and then in a clean cloth or a paper bag, kept at cool room temperature and out of the light, it holds for 7 to 10 days and is at its very best on days two and three. Never store it in plastic or in an airtight tin, which traps the moisture the filling releases and softens the crust into something damp within a day.
Refrigeration is the one thing to avoid. Cold accelerates starch retrogradation in an enriched crumb, so a gubana that has spent two days in the refrigerator is noticeably firmer and drier than one left in a cupboard for a week, and the cold also mutes the citrus zest and the grappa completely. If the kitchen is very warm, a cool larder or a north facing room is better than the refrigerator every time.
It freezes well, whole or in slices. Cool it completely, wrap it tightly in parchment then foil, and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw a whole cake overnight at room temperature still wrapped, so the condensation forms on the wrapping rather than on the crust. To refresh either a thawed cake or one that has gone past its best, warm it at 300°F (150°C) for 10 minutes for a whole cake or 4 minutes for slices, then let it come back to room temperature before serving. Never microwave it: the filling heats far faster than the crumb and turns the walnut oil unpleasant.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 12 slices from one 9 inch (23 cm) cake:
Calories: 520 kcal
Total Fat: 27 g
Saturated Fat: 8 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 18 g
Cholesterol: 95 mg
Sodium: 180 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 62 g
Fiber: 4 g
Total Sugars: 34 g
Added Sugars: 21 g
Protein: 9 g
Lactose: 1 g
Principal micronutrients: copper, manganese, magnesium and phosphorus from the walnuts and pine nuts, omega 3 alpha linolenic acid, vitamin E, potassium from the raisins, iron, folate and B vitamins from the enriched dough
These figures are estimates. Most of the fat and nearly all of the micronutrient content comes from the walnuts and pine nuts rather than from the butter, and the alcohol in the grappa largely evaporates during the bake, leaving the aromatics behind.
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