Piadina Romagnola

Piadina is a round, soft flatbread cooked on a griddle and eaten hot, either folded around a filling or torn up alongside a meal. It is not a yeasted bread: at most it contains a chemical raising agent, which gives it blisters rather than a crumb.

The Piadina Romagnola IGP rules, granted in 2014, allow soft wheat flour, water, salt and fat (lard, olive oil, or both) plus optional raising agents. No milk, no eggs, no sugar.

There are two official versions. The classic Piadina Romagnola is 4 to 8 mm thick and 15 to 25 cm across: substantial, foldable, the style of Forlì, Cesena and Ravenna. The Piadina Romagnola alla Riminese is up to 3 mm thick and 23 to 30 cm across: thin enough to see light through, made to be rolled.

The protected zone covers the provinces of Rimini, Forlì-Cesena and Ravenna, plus the part of the province of Bologna east of the river Sillaro.

Like a soft, savoury flatbread with the richness of a good pastry. The lard is what you notice: it gives piadina a short, faintly flaky quality that no oil-based flatbread has, closer to a scone or a biscuit than to pita.

It is properly salty, which is the point: piadina was made as a bread substitute, so it seasons itself. The scorched brown blisters from the griddle add a toasted note, and a fresh one has a slight steam-softness inside that lasts about ten minutes.

It does not taste yeasty, sour or sweet. If yours does, it is not a piadina.

Cook it dry. No oil in the pan: the fat is already in the dough. Get a heavy pan or a griddle properly hot, roll the dough thin, and cook two to three minutes a side, pricking the big bubbles with a fork as they rise. You are looking for pale bread with irregular brown blisters, not an even golden colour.

Fill it hot, straight off the heat, and eat it within a few minutes: piadina stiffens as it cools. The canonical filling is squacquerone cheese, rocket and prosciutto crudo: soft, tangy, bitter, salty, in that order. Sausage and onion, melted cheese with grilled vegetables, and Nutella for children are the other things every kiosk sells.

It also works simply cut into wedges and served hot in place of bread with a plate of salumi and cheese, which is how it is most often eaten at home in Romagna.

To reheat, use a dry pan for thirty seconds a side. Never the microwave, which turns it rubbery.

Cooked, a piadina keeps a couple of days at room temperature wrapped in a clean tea towel or a food bag. The fridge is not its friend: the starch retrogrades and the disc goes stiff and papery, though a minute in a dry pan brings it back every time. A sealed industrial pack runs to the printed date, which on an IGP product is short by design, and once opened the discs lose water fast, curling and hardening at the rim within two or three days. Raw dough holds 24 hours in the fridge under film; past that the lard begins to separate and the dough rolls out unevenly.

Freezing works for both states. Cooked discs go in with a sheet of baking paper between each one and reheat straight from frozen in a hot dry pan. Raw ones are rolled out first, stacked with paper and frozen flat, then cooked without thawing with about a minute added. Left uncovered in the freezer the exposed edges dry, whiten and turn brittle, so double-bag them.

A good piadina is pale with irregular brown blisters, never evenly golden all over like a crêpe or a tortilla. It should fold cold without cracking: a disc that splits along the fold was either overcooked or made with too little water. The bite is short and crumbly rather than chewy, and chewiness almost always means brewer's yeast, which does not belong in the dough, or dough that was worked too hard. The IGP covers two shapes, the classic (smaller and thicker) and the Riminese (wide and thin), so the diameter alone tells you nothing.

Abroad it lands in the wrap aisle next to tortillas, and that is where the labels part company. Piadina Romagnola IGP means the recipe is fixed, the ingredient list is short (flour, water, lard or olive oil, salt) and the date is close. Generic piadina-style wraps lean on cheap vegetable oils, preservatives and ethyl alcohol to stretch shelf life, and they cost less for a reason. One more thing not to confuse it with: a cassone, also called crescione, is a piadina folded into a half moon around a filling and cooked already sealed.

Packaged piadina is exported and turns up in Italian delis and larger supermarkets in the US and UK, usually in packs of four or five for $4–7 or £3–5. Look for Piadina Romagnola IGP on the label; generic 'Italian flatbread' is typically made with cheap vegetable oil, preservatives and ethyl alcohol to extend shelf life, and it shows in the texture.

In the UK, Italian delicatessens and online grocers stock it; in the US, Eataly and Italian importers carry it, and some regional chains stock it near the tortillas.

Honestly, though: this is one Italian product that is better made than bought. The ingredient list is four items, it needs no proving, and a home version cooked in a cast-iron pan beats almost anything vacuum-packed.

Romagna's roadside kiosks, the chioschi often painted in coloured stripes, are the institution, and they line the Via Emilia and the whole Adriatic coast from Ravenna down to Cattolica. Rimini, Riccione, Cesenatico and Cervia have the highest concentration.

Cervia holds Sapore di Sale in September, built around its historic salt pans, with the kiosks in full operation. Rimini hosts Al Meni in June, a street-food and chef festival where piadina is the constant. At Forlimpopoli, birthplace of Pellegrino Artusi, the Festa Artusiana in late June is the best week of the year to understand Romagnolo cooking generally.

Worth the detour: Montetiffi, above Sogliano al Rubicone, where a handful of artisans still hand-build the terracotta testi that piadina was traditionally cooked on.