Every year in May in the town of Lugagnano Val D’Arda there’s a feast dedicated to “Ciambelline”(busslanein). They are sweet small ring-shaped-biscuits made of very simple ingredients: flour, eggs, sugar, milk.
The story of Ciambelline(ring shaped biscuits) began in 1931 when Giuseppe Lombardi created the dough for “Sunday cookies.” Peppino, after having learned the art of baking opened his own bakery in Lugagnano.
Ciambelline existed at that time, but they were savory, made with bread dough and polished. Inseparable from the ciambelline were the ciambellaie, the street vendors who sold them. The last ciambellaia in the upper Val D’Arda disappeared in 1978.
In 1933, with a slight variation on the recipe for Sunday cookies, Peppino created Lugagnano’s first sweet ciambelline. Liquor flavoring was removed from the original recipe and milk was added.
