Recipe
🍳 BREAKFAST
Piadina
A thin griddled flatbread folded around soft cheese with ham, or with jam, the daily bread of the region.
Sammarinese · easy · serves 4
prep 20 min · cook 15 min
~649 cal · 25g protein · 86g carbs · 22g fat · 3g fiber · 10g sugars · 13g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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The piadina is the everyday flatbread of San Marino and the neighbouring Italian region of Romagna, a thin, unleavened round of dough, traditionally enriched with a little lard or olive oil, cooked fast on a hot flat griddle until it puffs and blisters with brown spots. It is at once daily bread and street food.
Its glory is in the filling, folded in while the piadina is still warm and pliable. The classic pairing is soft, tangy squacquerone cheese with prosciutto or with rocket, and a sweet version tucks in a smear of fig jam; countless other combinations of meats, cheeses, and greens fill the rest.
It suits any hour, a quick breakfast, a lunch on the move, an afternoon snack, and it is sold from dedicated kiosks all over the region. Warm, simple, and endlessly adaptable, the piadina is the honest, everyday taste of San Marino and Romagna.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally egg- and nut-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
3 cups flour
1/4 cup strutto (lard), or olive oil
1 tsp salt
as needed warm water
1 cup soft cheese (filling)
1/4 cup jam (filling)
1 tsp baking powder
Instructions
1
Heap the flour, make a crater in the middle, put the lard in it, and work the flour into the fat from the inside outwards, adding the salt, the baking powder and enough warm water to make a soft dough. Knead ten minutes and rest 20.
✎ Chef’s note
Lard, not oil, if you want the real thing. Casa Artusi teaches the piadina with strutto and it is what gives the bread its tenderness and its flavour; olive oil makes a decent piadina but a different one.
2
Divide the dough and roll each piece out with a rolling pin into a disc 15 to 30cm across.
✎ Chef’s note
San Marino sits between the two Romagnolo schools and splits the difference: thicker than a Rimini piadina, thinner than a Cesena or Ravenna one.
3
Lay it onto a hot terracotta testo or a dry cast-iron pan, prick it with a fork, turn it, prick again, and turn once more, three turns in all and the whole thing inside five minutes.
✎ Chef’s note
Pricking lets the steam out so the piadina stays flat instead of ballooning, and the three quick turns cook it through without drying it. The first one off the pan is always the odd one out; the Mariette say the first is pazzerella, a bit mad.
4
Fill it the moment it comes off the heat: squacquerone or stracchino with rocket and prosciutto crudo for the classic savoury version, or soft cheese and jam for a sweet one.
5
Fold in half and eat at once, while it is still hot. A piadina is not a thing that waits.
City of San Marino tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
City of San Marino. The Sammarinese piadina is its own thing, thicker than the Rimini version, made with flour, water, lard and salt and cooked on a terracotta testo. Torta tre monti, layers of crisp wafer with cocoa and hazelnut cream under dark chocolate, is named for the three peaks of Monte Titano and dates from after the Second World War.
🗺️
San Marino. Torta Tre Monti is a post-war invention rather than an old recipe: layers of crisp wafer with cocoa and hazelnut cream, coated in dark chocolate, shaped in three rises for the three peaks of Monte Titano. The mountain and the historic centre on it are a UNESCO World Heritage site, listed for seven hundred years of continuous republican government.
🌍
Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from San Marino
Nido di RondineSan Marino's "swallow's nest": pasta rolls filled with ham and cheese, sliced, and baked in tomato and béchamel.
Cappelletti in BrodoLittle hat-shaped filled pasta floating in a clear, rich broth, the festive first course of San Marino.
Torta Tre MontiCrisp wafer layers stacked with chocolate-hazelnut cream and glazed, the emblematic cake of San Marino's three towers.
Browse all San Marino recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Rolling pin.
Storing it: Best the day it is made. Wrap well and refresh in a warm oven, or freeze and reheat straight from frozen.
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Frequently asked questions
What is Piadina?
A thin griddled flatbread folded around soft cheese with ham, or with jam, the daily bread of the region.
Where does Piadina come from?
Piadina is a Sammarinese dish from City of San Marino, San Marino.
Can Piadina be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Piadina recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Piadina safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Piadina take to make?
About 35 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 15 minutes cooking), serving 4.
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