Nandufe Tortas
Nandufe's long curved bread-cake, soft and mottled by a wood-fired oven.
- Origin
- Nandufe · Tondela
- Region
- Nandufe · Tondela
- Season
- Year-round
Tortas de Nandufe are dry cakes around 30 centimetres long and 140 grams in weight, curved like bananas. Their pale-brown surface is irregularly mottled by a very fast wood-fired bake; inside they are soft and velvety, without additives.
The yeasted dough of flour, eggs, sugar, water and salt sits between bread and sponge cake. Each torta enters the open-door oven individually and bakes for only seven to eight minutes to preserve its texture.
- wheat flour
- eggs
- sugar
- yeast
- water
- salt
Gently sweet, soft and faintly smoky, tasting midway between enriched bread and a simple egg cake.
Uniformly brown industrial versions borrow the name, but the traditional cake is curved and wood-fire mottled.
At artisan bakeries in Nandufe and Canas de Santa Maria and fairs around Tondela.
Coffee, milk or fresh cheese.
In the early and mid-20th century, bakers in Colmeeiras diversified beyond bread with a long crooked cake for fairs, weddings and pilgrimages. The tradition moved to Nandufe and Canas de Santa Maria, where artisan bakeries maintain it.
Sources: tradicional.dgadr.gov.pt
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