Piparelle di Villa San Giovanni

Made for over a century at Villa San Giovanni on the Costa Viola, facing the Strait. They are cousins of the Messina piparelle across the water but thinner, with a different proportion of almonds, more sparing with the spices and doing without some of them altogether, pepper among them. The name is said to come from the wood ovens they were baked in, which smoked like pipes. Two master bakers, the brothers Antonio and Paolo Strati, began making them in the early 1900s, and others followed, Domenico Adamo, Carmelo Ventre, Federico Polistena among them.