Gubana

Gubana is a spiral cake. A large rectangle of rich leavened dough is spread with filling, rolled into a long cylinder, and then wound round itself inside a round tin, where it bakes into a tall golden coil. The cut face shows concentric rings of dough and filling, which is the image everyone recognises.

The filling is built on walnuts, which must dominate, with raisins, pine nuts, sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon and a serious measure of grappa. Most recipes also fold in crushed dry biscuits to bind, grated dark chocolate, candied citron and a spoonful of rum.

The dough is an enriched one, somewhere between brioche and sweet bread: flour, butter, eggs, sugar, yeast. Traditional producers use a natural starter and take twelve hours or more over the rise.

There are two different gubane and it is worth knowing which you are buying. The Natisone valley version is leavened: tall, soft, with a crumb that soaks up the liquor from the filling. The version common in Cividale and on the plain is made with puff pastry: lower, flakier, closer to a filled pastry roll. Both are called gubana, but the leavened one is the historic form.

It is served in slices, and in Friuli a spoonful of grappa is poured over each slice at the table. That is not a garnish: the cake is designed to receive it.

Walnut, immediately and throughout, with the particular slightly bitter, tannic quality that walnuts have and almonds do not. Behind it: raisins soaked in spirit, the resin of pine nuts, cinnamon, lemon zest, and the warmth of grappa running through everything.

The alcohol is present rather than suggested. A properly made gubana smells of spirit when you cut it, and the flavour is closer to a soaked fruit cake than to a pastry. That is the divide between people who love it and people who find it strong.

The dough is buttery but much less sweet than the filling: it exists to carry and absorb.

Texture depends on the version. The leavened one is soft, moist and slightly chewy, with the filling denser than the crumb around it. The puff-pastry version is crisp, flaky and drier, and reads more like a rolled biscuit. Both keep improving for a few days as the liquor spreads.

Cut it into slices about a centimetre and a half thick, following the spiral, with a smooth blade. A serrated knife drags the walnuts out and separates the rings.

Serve at room temperature, and pour a teaspoon of grappa over each slice as it goes to the table. This is standard practice across eastern Friuli, and it restores the alcohol that baking drives off.

It suits both the end of a meal and breakfast. A day-old slice is worth ten seconds in a dry pan or a toaster to bring back the fragrance; a microwave makes it rubbery.

It holds up better against cheese than you would expect. A thin slice beside a mature Montasio or an alpine cheese works, because walnut and salt seek each other out.

When it dries out, use the slices as the base of a spoon dessert, soaked in more grappa and covered with custard, or crumble them over walnut gelato.

It keeps at room temperature, wrapped in its own paper or closed in a tin, for ten to fifteen days. The alcohol in the filling and the oil in the walnuts both slow things down, and across the first few days the cake changes for the better as the liquor works its way out through the crumb. The fridge is the wrong place for it: cold pushes the starch in the leavened dough to retrograde, and the crumb turns chalky overnight.

Once it has been cut, cover the exposed face with film, because that section dries within hours and it is the part carrying the most filling. It freezes well, whole or in slices, for three months, and it should thaw at room temperature still inside its wrapper so the moisture goes back into the dough instead of onto the surface; frozen slices can go straight into a dry pan. The puff pastry version holds a few days less and takes up damp air quickly, and five minutes in a 160 °C oven brings the layers back.

Look at the cut face. The spiral should be tight and even, with the band of filling as thick as the band of dough or thicker; when the dough dominates, the saving was made exactly where the cost sits. The walnuts have to be in recognisable pieces rather than worked into a cream, because a smooth uniform filling means they were milled, or partly swapped for breadcrumbs and sugar. Smell it: grappa should come through alongside cinnamon and lemon zest, and a gubana with no alcohol on the nose has been softened for a general palate.

Decide which of the two types you are buying before you pay. The leavened one stands six to eight centimetres tall with visible crumb between the coils, while the puff pastry version is lower and shows thin flaky layers. Standard weight runs between half a kilo and a kilo, and one that feels light for its size is short on filling. Its relatives on foreign shelves are Slovenian potica and Triestine presnitz, and strudel, which is a log rather than a coil.

Artisan gubana from the Natisone valleys runs 18 to 28 euro a kilo. Sizes range from 300 g to a kilo and a half; the commonest is a 500-600 g cake at 12 to 18 euro. Puff-pastry versions cost a few euro less per kilo because they skip the long rise.

The cost is walnuts, which exceed a third of the total weight in a well-made cake. Cheaper versions cut them and raise the proportion of breadcrumbs or crushed biscuit in the filling, visible in the cut face and obvious in the first bite.

Strucchi, the single-portion version of the same filling, sell at 20 to 30 euro a kilo and are the cheapest way to taste what the cake is about.

Abroad it is rare. Italian delis in northern Europe and online specialists list it at roughly 16 to 26 dollars a pound in the US and 25 to 40 pounds a kilo in the UK, mostly around Easter and Christmas. Producers in the valleys ship directly and the cake travels well, because the spirit in the filling preserves it.

Check whether you are buying the leavened or the puff-pastry version before you pay. Good labels say so; if it does not, ask.

The Natisone valleys, in the province of Udine, where the cake comes from. San Pietro al Natisone and the hamlet of Azzida have the densest concentration of producers, nearly all family workshops that sell directly and ship across Italy.

Cividale del Friuli is the logical base. It is a Lombard town with a UNESCO-listed Tempietto, the Devil's Bridge hanging over the green gorge of the Natisone, and a compact old town where every pastry shop sells gubana, usually in both versions.

Easter and Christmas are the peaks, when production runs at full capacity and the valley villages hold fairs around it, but the cake is available year-round.

From the valleys, the narrow wooded roads climbing to Savogna and Drenchia reach the Slovenian border in a few kilometres, which is the quickest way to understand why gubana and potica are the same cake under two names.

One comparison worth building a day around: leavened gubana in the valleys, puff-pastry gubana in Cividale, and fried strucchi from a village shop, all in the same afternoon.