Coca is the Catalan flat baked dough, savory or sweet; the Andorran sweet coca massegada is enriched and topped with sugar, nuts, muscat, and brandy for festivals.
Break a strip of coca massegada and the top is crisp with caramelized sugar and toasted nuts, the crumb beneath soft and faintly boozy with muscat. Bite: lightly sweet and tender like a brioche, the almonds and pine nuts adding crunch, the sugar crackling, a warm hint of brandy and orange. A festive Pyrenean sweet bread, torn and shared at Easter and Christmas.
Enriching the coca dough with egg, oil, and milk gives a soft brioche-like crumb; the muscat and brandy perfume it. Egg wash glues the nut-and-sugar topping, which caramelizes in the oven into a crisp, sweet crust over the tender base. A flat shape bakes fast and even.
Variations
With candied fruit (coca de Sant Joan style). With cream filling. With aniseed. Savory version (coca de recapte) with vegetables. With more pine nuts. Glazed with apricot.
On the Palate
Where Coca Massegada sits in the Andorran flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8
How it's made
8 steps · 35 min active + 1 hour 55 min waiting
- 18 min
Dissolve 10 g yeast in 120 ml warm milk; mix into 400 g flour with 80 g sugar, 2 eggs, 60 ml olive oil, and a splash of brandy/muscat.
- 292 min
Knead to a soft dough; rise 90 min until doubled.
- 35 min
Roll the dough into a flat oval on a tray.
- 432 min
Prove 30 min.
- 52 min
Brush the top with beaten egg.
Watch outBrush the whole top with beaten egg before the nuts go on — it's the glue that anchors the almonds and sugar so they don't slide off.
- 63 min
Scatter with 60 g flaked almonds, 40 g pine nuts, and a heavy shower of sugar.
- 722 min
Bake at 190°C for 22 min until golden and the sugar crackles.
Watch outPull it when the crust is golden and the sugar has crackled into a crisp shell — that sugar crack is the doneness signal.
- 86 min
Cool and cut into long strips to serve.
