Florence's beloved fried dough: balls of soft leavened bread dough, the size of a walnut, deep-fried until they puff golden and hollow and served scalding hot, to be split open and stuffed with soft stracchino cheese and a slice of prosciutto. A classic Tuscan trattoria antipasto and street snack, kin to the flat fried donzelle and ficattole.
Coccoli belong to the frugal Tuscan tradition of frying scraps of bread dough, a way of turning the day's leaven into something rich and celebratory. In Florence the little fried balls are said to take their name from the coccoli, the round cones of the cypress trees that mark the Tuscan hills, for their knobbly, rounded shape. They share a table and a lineage with the donzelle and ficattole, flat kerchiefs and strips of the same dough fried crisp; all three come hot from the fryer as antipasto, classically alongside stracchino, prosciutto and other salumi. Long a fixture of trattorie and street stalls, they remain a first course and aperitivo snack across the city.
Straight from the oil they are shatteringly crisp and deep gold outside, light and steamy-hollow within, tasting of good bread and the fry. Torn open while hot and filled with cool, milky stracchino and a drape of sweet prosciutto, the play of crackling crust, soft cheese and salty ham is the whole point.
The puff is physics. A moist, well-leavened dough goes into oil at about 180°C, where the surface sets almost at once; trapped inside, the carbon dioxide from the yeast expands in the heat and the dough's water flashes to steam, blowing the crumb open and hollow. The rush of escaping steam holds most of the oil out, so the crust fries crisp rather than greasy, browning through the Maillard reaction and a little caramelisation. Frying only a few at a time keeps the oil hot enough to set and colour them fast; a cooler pan would let them soak up fat and turn heavy.
Variations
The same dough is rolled and cut flat into donzelle or ficattole and fried the same way, or the hot fritters are dusted with sugar for children. Fillings range beyond stracchino to squacquerone or crescenza cheese and any local salumi, from finocchiona to salame and mortadella. Some cooks enrich the dough with a little milk or an extra spoon of leaven for a lighter crumb, and the coccoli often join a fried-mixed antipasto with polenta and vegetables.
On the Palate
Where Coccoli sits in the Italian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
7 steps · 15 min
- 15 min
Dissolve the fresh yeast with a pinch of sugar in the warm water and let it foam.
- 215 min
Work the yeasted water and olive oil into the flour with a little salt to a soft, quite moist, elastic dough.
- 3120 min
Cover and leave to rise in a warm place until doubled and full of bubbles, about 2 hours.
Watch outThe rise is ready when the dough is doubled and full of bubbles — that trapped yeast gas is what puffs them hollow in the oil.
- 410 min
Heat plenty of neutral oil, or a high-oleic seed oil, to about 180°C.
- 510 min
With oiled or wet hands, pinch off walnut-sized pieces of dough and slip them straight into the oil.
- 68 min
Fry only five or six at a time, turning, until they puff, float and turn deep golden.
Watch outFry only five or six at a time so the oil stays hot — crowded, cool oil lets them soak up fat and turn heavy instead of puffing crisp.
- 73 min
Drain briefly on paper and serve at once, hot, with soft stracchino and prosciutto.
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