Pane fratau

Pane fratau is a layered dish from the Barbagia, in the central part of the Italian island of Sardinia. Its Sardinian name is usually glossed as shredded bread, and the bread in question is pane carasau, the thin crisp flatbread that shepherds and farmers carried in bags through the day. Sheets of the bread are softened in water, broth or tomato sauce, then stacked in alternating layers with grated pecorino cheese and finished with a poached egg whose yolk is left liquid so it can be spread over the top before eating. The dish began as a frugal way to use the shards that gathered at the bottom of the bag and later became a staple across the island. A popular legend credits two women who cooked it for a visit by King Umberto I, while the writer Grazia Deledda mentions it in the nineteenth century; the source also notes that bread soaked in liquid and combined with oil, eggs or cheese is documented far earlier, from ancient Rome through the Middle Ages. The name is often misspelled with a double t, as frattau.