How to Give (and Bake) a Torta (de Aceite)
Spain’s crispiest pastry with the most misleading name
I’ve always been fond of the word torta and not just for culinary reasons. It’s one of those funnily ambiguous Spanish words that has different meanings, depending on where you are or what you are talking about. In Spain, a torta can be any kind of flatbread or round-ish thing - like tortilla, the famous Spanish omelette (the diminutive form). But torta can also be something sweet and nostalgic, like a torta de aceite, or something sharp and unexpected, like a slap in the face. And, yes, in Spain tortillera is also slang for a lesbian (although it has a different linguistic root). Sometimes language is layered like puff pastry.
But torta can also be something sweet and nostalgic, like a torta de aceite, or something sharp and unexpected, like a slap in the face.
In Argentina, they say torta de cumpleaños for birthday cake, which never fails to make me laugh at the image of someone getting slapped for turning another year older, especially after forty. (Don’t worry, in Argentina torta really means cake.) Meanwhile in Spain, birthday cake is tarta. And in Mexico? A torta is a sandwich, even though some are not round or flat.
But let’s go back to España, tortas de aceite are a category unto themselves. You’ll find tortas in various forms across Spain -some are thick and savoury, others paper-thin and crisp. In Castilla, they tend to be a savoury bread often served with a glass of wine. In Andalucía, they can also be a rustic yeasty sweet or savoury bread like an Italian focaccia, but around Sevilla, the torta de aceite becomes delicate, crisp, but bold with the flavor of green aniseed or matalauva. The most enigmatic sounding spice name I know has its origin in the Hispanic Arabic name ḥabbat ḥulúwwa which means sweet grains.
The queen of tortas which come of course from Castilleja de la Cuesta, a small town just outside Sevilla, has become one of Spain’s most celebrated exports. In 1910 Inés Rosales, an intrepid entrepreneur, made the humble recipe a commercial and marketing success. Once only plain and sweet, they now come in all kinds of flavours: cinnamon, orange, rosemary, lemon and sesame. I suspect this is mostly to please American buyers, which seems to require at least six variations of any product. I am not judging. I love these kinds of innovations (I used to work for a big importer in Chicago and tortas literally sold themselves).
Matalauva has an odd, sweet and warm flavour like liquorice. It’s a Mediterranean classic spice, essential in liqueurs like Spain’s licor de anís, France’s anisette, or Greece’s ouzo. Anís del Mono (Spain’s most famous brand) is syrupy-sweet and divisive. Some drink it with coffee; others sip it on ice from a cognac glass, usually at Nochebuena or Christmas Eve. And while artists like Picasso, Dalí and Juan Gris were all fans of Anís del Mono (or at least of their famous bottle) I have yet to be convinced.
Outside of Spain (where they retail for around €1.20) tortas aren’t cheap. They’re somewhat fragile, and often a few get crushed in the container, or arrive slightly stale in far flung locations. Not that it matters in my house, once opened, they vanish within a day. Everyone is a fan.
My daughters’ enormous appetite for tortas sent me searching for a recipe that doesn’t require a mixer or making inverted sugar with a thermometer. Something you can mix in a single bowl with no gadgets and causing no drama if it all goes wrong. Most involve infusing olive oil with aniseed, sesame, and a bit of lemon zest (something I refuse to do because getting spilled olive oil off your floor is hard work).
What really matters is rolling them really thin and tracking down decent matalauva, plus a splash of anise liqueur or in a pinch rum or cognac. The alcohol serves to make the pastry flakier.
In Ireland where I live, green aniseed the spice doesn’t have much of a following except in the peculiar aniseed balls, a type of confectionery. Some suggest swapping in fennel, but the flavor of fennel seed is too savoury, ground star anise is a good substitute but also you can make an orange extract or cinnamon-flavoured torta. You can really use whatever baking spice or extract you want.
This is my lazy-but-still-tasty version.
Easy tortas de aceite
400 g strong flour
1 tbsp aniseed or matalauva*
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
1 tsp salt
6g instant yeast
100 g caster sugar
125 ml extra virgin olive oil, not the fancy early harvest
100 ml water
50 ml aniseed sweet liqueur or ouzo
1 egg white
Caster sugar for sprinkling
*substitute for ground star anise.
In a bowl mix all the dry ingredients.
Add the oil, water and aniseed liqueur.
Mix with your hand until the mixture forms a ball.Take out of the bowl and knead for five minutes.
Place in a bowl and cover with cling film. Place somewhere warm until it doubles in size. Approximately one hour.
Turn the oven to 230° for approximately 8-10 minutes. Be warned: you're going to have to watch the tortas carefully during baking as they start coloring on the outside quickly!
Prepare two baking trays with parchment paper.
Weigh out pieces of 30 g using a weighing scale (I like to do this but it is not necessary) and shape into a ball. Thirty grams is how much the traditional tortas weigh. Leave them to rest for five minutes so the dough relaxes.
Flatten each ball with your hand and roll out as thin as possible with a rolling pin. The dough is very elastic and tends to shrink.
Place on the baking tray and brush with egg white and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake in the oven one baking tray at a time until they start turning pale gold with speckles of caramelised sugar. Serve with café solo.
