Ask Chef Walter: Sardinian Pizza – Walter Potenza

by Chef Walter Potenza, contributing writer

Friends:

I found this style of pizza or pizzetta while Traveling to the Island of Sardinia a while ago. While looking into the unusual delicacy, I realized that it is a favorite of Instagram tourists, who have little to do other than photograph everything on site, looking for a like or a heart. But, as far as having an educated palate, I have my doubts. Puff pastry is the outside dough encasing tomato sauce, oozing out at every bite. Tasty and flaky, the product enjoys the region’s recognition from the Agricultural Ministry and reaches every corner of the land.

Its unique sweet-salty taste makes it suitable for a delicious aperitif in the late afternoon or early evening, accompanied by coffee or cappuccino, a bit like Genoese focaccia, beer, and cocktails. It is Cagliari’s response to the “Apericena,” the new dining fever of appetizers before dinner.

It is an identifying product, without a doubt, in which the inhabitants of Cagliari recognize themselves, for which the best pastry shops and the most famous bakeries compete in producing it. The recipe is simple; the original ingredients are puff pastry, tomato sauce, and a few capers.

Nowadays, there are numerous versions, the most common with cheese, anchovies, or ham. I found a company from Cagliari that produces more than 30 different types, including the sweet ones, all in the walking version. As you can see, we have one flavor for each of you.

Then there is the rectangular version, the “delizia,” slightly larger; there is also the mini puff pastry pizza, with a slightly smaller diameter. But it is the classic puff pizza is the queen of breakfasts and aperitifs in the bars of the Sardinian capital, the metropolitan area, and throughout southern Sardinia.

Not long ago, a good-natured controversy broke out with some folks from Lecce in Puglia, who pointed out how similar their rustic Leccese was to the puff pastry pizza from Cagliari. So, I compared both versions; there is an apparent resemblance in shape but not in the fillings. And so the food fight was short-lived.

And the origins?

Mysterious, whispered by some elderly bakers and pastry chefs who claim it was invented by mistake, as often happens in the kitchen, where successful innovations are obtained by experimenting. History narrates that a pastry chef from Cagliari had, in the 1950s, extra puff pastry left over from the production of croissants. So he thought of using this puff pastry by “copping it” with a round cutter to obtain a small pizza, adding a little tomato sauce he had by chance and two capers from Selargius, a nearby village where capers are delicious.

It was a reconstituted, meager-looking product without even a bit of cheese. The chef placed it on sale, and customers responded with euphoria. In the years after the Second World War, people timidly tried to return to normalcy and eat good things, forgetting the rationing and hunger suffered in the war. He did it several times until some of his colleagues imitated him, and the product became increasingly widespread, continuing up to the present day.

A little luxury in the post-war period

The Ministry of Traditional Agri-food Products (PAT) recognized the Cagliari pizza, including it in the roster of the Sardinian island’s products of authenticity and excellence. Several testimonies endorsing the specialty include the master pizza maker Roberto Meloni, who remembers having prepared it in the early eighties, and Annalisa Saddi, granddaughter of the famous Mariuccia of the Pirri pastry shop, who recalls when at her confirmation on July 1, 1979, the puff pastry pizza took center stage at the apPetizer tables.

Historical sources only mention puff pastry pizza at the end of the 1990s, when the folklorist Gino Camboni mentions it in a rare essay. However, several bakers around the city have remembered it well since the 1950s because puff pizza constituted a small greedy luxury and an act of revenge for the poverty suffered during the war.

Like cherries

Nowadays, some companies produce thousands a day in the summer, and entering one of these modern laboratories is impressive. Large conveyor belts lead the puff pastry, already peeled, i.e., worked in layers, towards an automatic cupping machine that pours the sauce. The Sardinian market is increasingly hungry for this product. Despite the very high number of puff pizzas produced daily, there is no danger that they will go unsold; distributed early in the morning to bars and large-scale retail outlets, this is bought both loose and in trays of eight to twelve small pizzas.

Because the puff pastry pizza is like cherries, one leads to another, and a discreet tray is “brushed” in just a few minutes.

Here is the recipe if you want to make it at home.

Ingredients

• Two rolls of puff pastry
• Four tablespoons of tomato sauce
• One tablespoon of tomato paste
• capers, in brine
• anchovies (if you want)
• One egg
• Salt to taste

Method:

1. Mix the tomato sauce with the concentrate and add salt to taste.
2. Roll out the puff pastry and form circles the size of a glass.
3. Set half of the circles aside. In the center of the remaining half, put the tomato sauce and add an anchovy and some capers.
4. Cover with the other circle of puff pastry and close as best it can.
5. Brush the surface of the various pizzas with beaten eggs.
6. Bake at 375F. Degrees, preheated oven for about 10/15 minutes until they are golden at the right point.

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Emilia Romagna, May 12 – 19, 2025, Chef Walters Food + Wine + History + Culture Tour

www.chefwalterscookingschool.com

Images Attribution via FK

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Meet Chef Walter!

There is a constant, recognizable thread in the career of Walter Potenza to elevate the level of Italian culinary culture in the United States. Besides his unquestionable culinary talent and winning business perspective, Chef Walter has been a relentless educator with passion and knowledge who defeats stereotypes. His life, career, and values are a model, an example to follow by any chef of Italian gastronomy working outside Italy.  

Chef Walter appears regularly on National and International Networks such as Food Network, ABC, CBS, NBC, RAI, FOX, and Publications such as NY. Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, Saveur, Gourmet, and several Italian media outlets.  And now – RINewsToday!

www.chefwalterscookingschool.com

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If you missed Walter’s article on Defending the legacy of Federal Hill:

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