Forno Boccione (or Pasticceria Boccione) is easy to miss. There is no sign to announce the tiny shop in the heart of Rome’s Jewish Ghetto. You would have to somehow notice the simple cake display to even realize it was a pastry shop.
The kosher bakery is large enough to fit maybe six people at a time. However, you will usually find it packed with many more, all trying to order a slice of pizza ebraica or ricotta and sour cherry cake from the counter.
It is the ricotta e visciole (ricotta and wild cherry) cakes that are probably what the forno del ghetto is best known for. Though, the sparsely decorated shops also offers versions with chocolate or almonds as well.
If you stop by too late in the afternoon, this cake with its blackened top will likely be sold out.
Rome’s Ghetto was established by Pope Paul IV in 1555. For more than 300 years, Rome’s Jewish community was segregated in this swampy area near the banks of the river. The neighborhood would flood regularly, and the ramshackle living conditions were pretty wretched.
With all of this isolated confinement to a small area of the city, distinct recipes began to emerge. In addition to respecting religious dietary laws (kosher), Rome’s Jewish community was also limited by their poverty and papal edicts.
This ricotta and cherry cake came about because of one such papal decree which forbade Jews from selling or trading any dairy products. One way to hide ricotta? Bake it into a pastry crust and mix it with cherries to further disguise the cheese. That is why the cake has a fully closed top rather than a pie-like lattice. The thicker layer of dough would have helped to better hide the ricotta inside. (Here is more on the history of the dish, in Italian).
Rome’s Jewish Ghetto was liberated in 1870 and the once poor and persecuted neighborhood is now one of the most elegant areas of the city – where you can walk through ancient Roman ruins one moment and stroll past expensive apartment buildings in the same breath.
It remains the best part of Rome to find and try traditional Jewish Roman cuisine – and Boccione is one of the most historic shops in the Ghetto.
The ricotta e visciole cake can be purchased whole, or you can ask for a slice (though they are rarely interested in cutting less than a quarter of the cake at a time – so expect a LARGE piece).
The cakes are sold by weight, and cost about €24 each or €6 for a piece.
It is a sweet expense that is more than worth it.
I have Italian friends who dream of New York style cheesecake – but to me, this is certainly a better choice.
If you are still hungry and want to try more Roman Jewish cuisine, Sora Margherita is just around the corner.
Katie Parla and Kristina Gill also have a section of cucina ebraica recipes in their book Tasting Rome
, (that is an affiliate link which you can read more about here but you can also find the cookbook at the Almost Corner Bookshop in Rome).
Pasticceria Boccione
Via del Portico d’Ottavia
Rome (Quartiere Ebraico/Jewish Ghetto)
Open Sunday through Thursday from 8 am to 7:30 pm, and Friday from 8 am to 3:30 pm.
Closed: Friday afternoon and Saturday, as well as Jewish High Holidays.
We were in Rome at the end of last March and I definitely saw these blackened cakes. i wish I’d known what they were. I thought the baker had had a spectacularly bad day, over-cooking all the cakes.
I didn’t even think of that but I can see how that would totally be the case if you simply walked by! Now there’s another excuse to come back!
We were there as well, had lunch next door. Didn’t want to wait on the long line for what, at the time , we did not know. Wow!
When we talk about our visit to Rome we always mention pizza ebraica and this small bakery. Taste that we never forget.
Hi. We LOVED the ricotta and cherry cake and have been trying to replicate it at home with no success. Any advice as to where to get the recipe?
Ahh! No tips. The recipe is top secret
We visited the bakery last week, queued for more than 20 minutes, only to get to be served by two very busy servers who were serving one family for more than 5 minutes. The family was keen to buy kilos of the baked goods. Everything looked overcooked and, unfortunately, we were told they run off of the famous ricotta cake, so we had to choose from the goods on offer. On offer they seemed to only have very dry biscotti looking cakes and we did not want that. We decided to ask for one cake that looked dry, but had some red and green bits inside, so we asked for one to share for two. The size of the cake was roughly 3 cmx 6 cm and the price was 5 euro. It was nice, but not worth 5 euro and the queue. We sat in the queue at around 14.50 h. Why don’t they bake more ricotta cheese cake if they know it gets sold so fast and bake less biscotti? We were not the only disappointed people in the queue. Not everybody can afford to go to Rome back and fro to just sit in the queue to buy the ricotta cheese cake.