The pancake festival of Montefioralle
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Every year, for the feast of St. Giuseppe, on the 18th and 19th of March, the historic pancake festival is celebrated in Montefioralle.
The rice pancakes in Tuscany are a real delight: hot, slightly greasy, crunchy outside and very soft in-side. They are the traditional dessert of the “feast of the father”, an ancient popular festival that cele-brated the most famous father of all, San Giuseppe and all the fathers of the country. The celebration of this saint, which then involved all the fathers of the country, dates back to the Re-naissance. Rice pancakes are the dessert dedicated to this festival.
We must not forget that despite St. Giuseppe, as protector of fathers of families, is a celebration offi-cially instituted only in 1870. The true entry of the saint into Catholic religious celebrations took place in 1480, thanks to St. Bernardino of Siena and Giovanni Gerson. It was in fact with the approval of Pope Sisto IV that they began to celebrate St. Giuseppe, husband of Maria and protector of all fathers on the date of March 19th, a party that then became mandatory from the ‘600.
Regarding Montefioralle, this festival has taken on special importance for the whole community: in the main square of the village there is a huge pot with a diameter of two meters (capacity 250 kg of oil!), ready to fry thousands of rice pancakes.
Some volunteers take care of the “culinary” aspect of the festival: they knead, shape and fry the pan-cakes one by one, throwing them into the large common pot. This is a tradition that has been handed down from generation to generation.
Our family was particularly involved in this festival, as Bruno, uncle of mother Fausta, was among the creators of this festival and the recipe for pancakes still used today is his.
The whole Castaldi family was always a very active part of the community of Montefioralle: every time we see frying pancakes in the square, we think of Uncle Bruno and Uncle Giuseppe (called Magnino) near the pot to fry pancakes to be distributed to all the villagers.