Italian Umbrian Ring Cake | Torcolo di San Costanzo
Updated: Sep 14
The torcolo is the cake Perugia eats on January 29, the feast of San Costanzo, and it is not really a cake at all. It is a sweet bread: a lean yeast dough raised once on its own, then opened and enriched with olive oil, sugar, candied citron, raisins, pine nuts and anise seed, kneaded again, shaped by hand into a ring on a flat pan and given a long second rise. The top is brushed with egg yolk and cut exactly five times before it goes into the oven.
Those five cuts are the detail Perugians check first. They are read as the five medieval gates of the city walls, and a torcolo with four or six of them is, locally, simply wrong. The ring itself is shaped free hand and never in a mould, which is why a genuine one is slightly irregular, thicker in one place than another, with a hole that has closed a little during the rise.
Yield: one ring, 12 servings. Prep: 45 minutes active. First rise: 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Second rise: 2 to 3 hours. Bake: 40 to 45 minutes. Total: about 6 hours plus cooling. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: dessert. Region: Umbria, Perugia, San Costanzo on January 29.
The Story
San Costanzo was the first bishop of Perugia, martyred under Marcus Aurelius in the second century, and he is one of the three patrons of the city alongside Sant'Ercolano and San Lorenzo. His feast on January 29 is the oldest and most genuinely Perugian of the three celebrations, centred on the basilica that carries his name on the southern edge of the historic centre, and the torcolo has been the food attached to it for as long as the written record reaches.
Perugia keeps the tradition unusually precisely. A formula was deposited in 2025 at the Chamber of Commerce of Umbria setting out the accepted proportions and the method, which is why this recipe insists on details that would elsewhere be treated as preference: olive oil and not butter, five cuts and not a decorative pattern, a flat pan and not a ring mould, and the staged enrichment after the first dough has doubled. There is also a Perugian superstition worth knowing: an unmarried woman who eats the first slice is said to marry within the year.
Ingredients
For the first dough
All purpose or bread flour, 5 cups (600 g)
Fresh baker's yeast, 1 1/4 oz (35 g), or 1/2 oz (14 g) instant dry yeast
Warm water at 95°F (35°C), about 1 1/4 cups (300 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
For the enrichment
Extra virgin olive oil, 7 tbsp plus 1 tsp (100 g), mild and not bitter
Granulated sugar, 1 cup (200 g)
Candied citron, cut into small dice, 3 1/2 oz (100 g)
Raisins, 4 1/4 oz (120 g)
Pine nuts, 3 1/2 oz (100 g), untoasted
Anise seeds, 1/3 oz (10 g), about 2 tbsp
For the pan and the top
Large egg, 1, separated, yolk only for brushing
Unsalted butter for the pan, about 1 tbsp (14 g)
Flour for the pan, about 1 tbsp (8 g)
Preparation
Soak and dry the raisins, dice the citron, prepare the pan
Cover the raisins with warm water for 15 minutes, then drain them and squeeze them firmly in a clean cloth until no more water comes out. Their soaking water is not part of the dough water and must not go in. Cut the citron into small even dice, no larger than a quarter inch, so it disperses instead of forming sweet pockets. Butter a flat heavy baking sheet and dust it with flour. Do not reach for a ring pan or a tube pan: this ring is shaped by hand and rises free on the sheet. Separate the egg and keep the yolk covered.
Mix the lean first dough
Whisk the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Crumble the fresh yeast into about half a cup of the warm water and let it dissolve completely, then pour it into the flour. Add the remaining water gradually, working with one hand, until the dough comes together with the consistency of a normal bread dough: firm, slightly tacky, not sticky. The stated 1 1/4 cups is deliberately approximate, because flour absorbency varies. Stop adding water while the dough is still on the firm side.
Knead and let the first dough double
Turn the dough onto an unfloured work surface and knead it for 8 to 10 minutes, until it is smooth, elastic and uniform, with no dry patches. Return it to the bowl, cover with a cloth and leave it somewhere warm and free of draughts until it has fully doubled in volume, usually 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Judge this by eye and not by the clock. The enrichment is punishing on a dough that has not built its structure first, and a first rise cut short cannot be recovered later.
Open the dough and work in the oil, sugar, fruit and anise
Turn the doubled dough out and flatten it into a rough rectangle. Add the olive oil, sugar, citron, squeezed raisins, pine nuts and anise seeds, then fold the dough over them and press down. It will look hopeless for several minutes: the oil sits on the surface, the sugar liquefies, and the dough slips rather than kneads. Keep folding and pressing rather than stretching. Do not add flour to make it manageable, since the extra flour is what turns a torcolo dry.
Knead the enriched dough for a full ten minutes
Once the oil and sugar have started to be absorbed, knead properly for at least 10 minutes by the clock. The dough passes through a slippery stage and then suddenly comes back together, smooth and shiny, with the fruit and pine nuts distributed evenly rather than in clusters. This transition is the technical heart of the recipe. Stopping before it happens leaves oily streaks in the baked crumb and a compacted base.
Shape the ring by hand and give it the second rise
Roll the dough into a thick rope about 24 inches long, bring the ends together and press them firmly to seal, working the join until it disappears. Lift the ring onto the prepared sheet and open the centre hole with your fingers to about three inches across, since it closes considerably during the rise. Cover loosely and leave it in a warm draught free place for 2 to 3 hours, and longer if needed. It is ready when it is visibly full and springs back slowly from a light press, still holding a defined ring.
Glaze the top and make exactly five cuts
Twenty minutes before baking, heat the oven to 356°F (180°C) with a rack in the middle. Beat the yolk with a teaspoon of water and brush it thinly and evenly over the whole upper surface, avoiding pools in the crevices, which scorch. With the tip of a very sharp knife or a razor, make exactly five short shallow cuts across the top of the ring, evenly spaced around it. Shallow means about a quarter inch. A deep cut deflates the rise you have waited three hours for.
Bake and cool completely before slicing
Bake at 356°F (180°C) for 40 to 45 minutes. Start checking at 40 minutes: the surface should be deeply golden and firm, the cuts opened, and a skewer into the thickest part should come out clean. If it is not there, continue baking and check every 5 minutes rather than treating 45 as a limit. Pine nuts on the surface darken faster than the crumb bakes, so tent it loosely with foil if they are running ahead. Slide the ring onto a rack and cool it completely, at least 2 hours, before cutting.
Plating
A torcolo is presented whole and cut at the table. Put it on a wooden board or a plain ceramic platter, with the five cuts uppermost and visible, and bring a serrated knife. The ring is the object people recognise, and slicing it in the kitchen removes the only visual statement the dessert makes. In Perugian homes it sits out on the board through the afternoon of January 29 and is cut as people arrive.
Professional Technique
Staged enrichment is the defining technique and the reason the torcolo tastes of bread rather than cake. Sugar and fat both interfere with gluten formation and with yeast activity: sugar competes for water and raises osmotic pressure on the yeast cells, while oil coats flour proteins and blocks the bonds that build an elastic network. By raising a lean dough first, the gluten structure and the fermentation are already established before either arrives, and the enrichment then softens a finished structure instead of preventing one from forming.
The second rise carries almost all the risk. A dough carrying a cup of sugar, seven tablespoons of oil and a pound of heavy inclusions ferments slowly and rises against real weight, which is why two to three hours is a floor rather than a target. The practical test is the slow springback: press the side of the ring with a fingertip and the dent should fill in over two or three seconds. Instant springback means it needs longer, and a dent that stays is a ring that has gone too far and will collapse in the oven.
Texture and Moisture Control
The target crumb is open and slightly chewy, moist but never greasy, with the citron, raisins and pine nuts suspended evenly through it. Olive oil is what keeps it soft for several days, since it stays liquid at room temperature and does not set the way butter does, which is precisely why the traditional formula never substitutes one for the other. A butter version goes firm overnight and tastes of a different cake entirely.
Water balance is decided before the dough is mixed. Raisins that go in wet release their water during the long second rise, slackening the dough locally and creating a soggy compacted zone around each one. Squeezing them hard in a cloth is not fussiness. Equally, resist adding flour during the enrichment stage when the dough is at its most slippery, because that flour is never hydrated properly and produces the dry crumbly crumb that people blame on overbaking.
Professional Mise en Place
Equipment and tools
Large mixing bowl and a clean unfloured work surface for kneading
Flat heavy baking sheet, buttered and floured, and never a ring or tube pan
Pastry brush for the yolk glaze and a razor or very sharp paring knife for the cuts
Digital scale, cloths for covering the dough and for squeezing the raisins
Cooling rack and a serrated bread knife for slicing
Prepared ahead
Citron diced small and pine nuts weighed, up to 2 days ahead, kept covered
Raisins soaked, drained and squeezed dry, on the day, up to 4 hours ahead
Baking sheet buttered and floured before the first dough is mixed
Egg separated, yolk covered and refrigerated, white reserved for another use
Anise seeds weighed and checked for freshness by smell
Service setup
Warm draught free spot identified for both rises, around 75°F (24°C)
Oven preheated a full 20 minutes before the second rise is judged complete
Foil ready to tent the ring if the pine nuts colour early
Cooling rack cleared, with at least 2 hours allowed before service
Board, serrated knife and small wine glasses set out for the table
Chef Tips
Smell the anise seeds before you weigh them. Anise loses its volatile oils faster than almost any other seed spice, and a jar that has been open for two years contributes nothing but a vaguely woody note. Fresh seeds are strongly liquorice scented when crushed between the fingers, and since anise is the signature aroma of a torcolo there is no point proceeding without it.
Use a mild olive oil rather than a peppery one. A robust Umbrian oil is magnificent on bread and wrong here: its bitterness and pepper come through clearly in the baked crumb and fight the sugar and the citron. Look for something soft and slightly fruity, and if all you have is assertive, use half of it and make up the difference with a neutral oil.
Buy candied citron in a block and dice it yourself rather than using the pre cut mixed peel sold for fruit cakes, which is mostly orange, heavily syruped and gluey. Real cedro comes as translucent pale green pieces with a clean bitter perfume, and it is the single ingredient that most separates a good torcolo from an ordinary one.
Common Mistakes
Adding the oil and sugar to the first dough. This is the error that ruins the most torcoli. Enrichment present from the start slows the yeast badly and prevents a proper gluten network, and you end up with a dense, heavy, greasy ring that never rose. The lean dough must double first.
Using butter instead of olive oil. Butter is not a variation, it is a different cake. It sets firm as the ring cools, gives a fine short crumb rather than a bready one, and buries the anise. Olive oil is what keeps the torcolo soft for three days.
Baking it in a ring or tube pan. A mould traps steam against the sides, so the crumb steams rather than bakes and the surface never forms the skin that holds the cuts open. Shape the ring by hand on a buttered floured flat sheet.
Cutting the second rise short. A heavily enriched dough with a pound of fruit and nuts in it rises slowly, and two to three hours is a minimum. Judge by the slow springback, not the clock, and accept four hours in a cold kitchen.
Making more or fewer than five cuts, or cutting deep. Five is the fixed number and it is read locally as the five city gates. Deep slashes deflate a ring you have proved for three hours, so keep them about a quarter inch.
Wine Pairing
Montefalco Sagrantino Passito DOCG: The Umbrian pairing, made thirty minutes from Perugia from air dried Sagrantino grapes. It is sweet but carries the most ferocious tannin of any Italian dessert red, and that tannin is what makes it work: it scrapes back the olive oil richness in the crumb while its dried blackberry and bitter cocoa notes run alongside the citron and the raisins. Serve at 61°F (16°C).
Orvieto Classico DOC: The other Umbrian option, and specifically the abboccato style, which is off dry rather than fully sweet. Its restraint is the point, since the torcolo is only moderately sweet and a full dessert wine can overwhelm it. Grechetto and Procanico give white peach and a faint almond bitterness that meets the anise directly, with acidity that keeps the slice from feeling heavy.
Vin Santo del Chianti Classico DOC: The obvious cross border choice and hard to fault. Long oxidative ageing in small barrels produces walnut, dried apricot and a caramel edge that mirrors the pine nuts and the yolk glazed crust almost exactly. Its high acidity and moderate rather than syrupy sweetness suit a bread textured dessert far better than a richer wine would.
Storage & Reheating
The torcolo keeps better than almost any other Italian festive cake, and that is entirely down to the olive oil. Once it is completely cool, wrap it tightly in a clean cloth or in food safe wrap and keep it at room temperature in a cool place for up to 4 days. It is arguably better on the second day than the first, once the anise and citron have had a night to move through the crumb. Never refrigerate it: the cold sets the crumb and stales the starch faster than the counter does.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 12 slices from one ring:
Calories: 445 kcal
Total Fat: 15 g
Saturated Fat: 2 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 12.5 g
Cholesterol: 15 mg
Sodium: 210 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 70 g
Fiber: 2.5 g
Total Sugars: 29 g
Added Sugars: 17 g
Protein: 8 g
Lactose: 0 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin E, magnesium, manganese, iron, thiamine, zinc, copper
These figures are estimates. The butter and flour used to prepare the sheet are excluded, since almost none of it is eaten, and the sugar content varies with how heavily syruped the candied citron is. Made without butter or dairy in the crumb, the ring contains no lactose.
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