Bastelle are Corsican savory turnovers: rounds of a simple olive-oil dough folded over a filling of chard and brocciu (or onion and herbs) and baked until golden and blistered. They are bakery and market fare across Corsica, eaten warm in the hand as a snack or light meal. The dough is plainer and shorter than puff pastry, the filling green and milky, the whole thing modest and homely.
Bastelle belong to the same Corsican repertoire of chard-and-brocciu baking as the island's turnovers and tarts, sold in bakeries and at village fairs especially around the spring brocciu season. The name relates to the wider Italian-Mediterranean family of stuffed baked dough (the Sicilian and Calabrian sfincione and pitta share the lineage). It is a humble, undated tradition of using fresh sheep cheese and garden greens in a portable baked parcel; no single town or inventor is recorded, and it is best treated as long-standing folk baking.
A golden, slightly puffed half-moon with a thin, crisp-then-chewy crust that gives way to a soft green filling of chard bound with milky brocciu, lightly oniony and herb-flecked. The dough is not flaky like puff pastry but tender and a little bread-like. Eaten warm, the cheese is still soft and the chard sweet; the edges, sealed and baked hard, are the crunchiest part.
The filling must be dry: chard is blanched, wrung out hard, and chopped, and any onion is cooked down first, so the parcels do not steam open or sog the base. Brocciu carries no gluten, so it is the chard and a beaten egg that hold the filling together inside. The olive-oil dough is short rather than laminated — the fat coats the flour to keep it tender without the many butter layers of puff pastry — so it bakes to a crisp shell rather than rising in leaves. Sealing the edges well stops the filling escaping as steam builds in the oven.
Variations
The classic filling is chard and brocciu, but onion-and-herb, leek, or pumpkin versions are equally traditional, made when one or the other is in season. Some are baked, others fried in oil until they blister; out of brocciu season, other fresh sheep cheese or ricotta stands in. Sizes range from small individual turnovers to a large folded pie cut into portions.
On the Palate
Where Bastelle sits in the French flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6How it's made
7 steps · 50 min active + 40 min waiting
- 115 min
Make the dough: work flour, olive oil, water, an egg, and salt into a smooth firm ball, then rest it, wrapped, for at least 30 minutes.
- 28 min
Blanch the chard, drain, wring out thoroughly, and chop fine.
Watch outWring the blanched chard bone-dry before it goes in — any retained water soaks the base and steams the parcels open in the oven.
- 312 min
Soften the chopped onion in olive oil, combine with the chard, crumbled brocciu, a beaten egg, salt, and pepper, and let cool.
- 410 min
Roll the dough thin and cut into rounds; place filling on one half of each round.
- 510 min
Fold over into half-moons and press or crimp the edges firmly to seal.
Watch outPress the edges firmly shut — brocciu has no gluten to bind, so a weak seal lets the filling escape as the steam builds.
- 65 min
Brush the tops with beaten egg or oil and set on a lined tray.
- 723 min
Bake at 180C until golden and blistered, about 20 to 25 minutes; eat warm.
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