Every year, when Easter approaches, it returns to Italian tables: pastiera. An ancient dessert, born in the Neapolitan tradition, with its fragrant filling of ricotta, cooked wheat, citrus peel and orange blossom, enclosed in a golden pastry.
For decades, talking about the best pastiera in Italy meant looking towards the South, towards Naples and Campania. But for a few years it seems something has changed and the best pastiera of 2026 comes from the shores of Lake Iseo (at least according to the Regina Pastiera competition).
The best pastiera of 2026
Juri Caseri, head pastry chef at Forneria del Lago di Paratico, in the province of Brescia, won first place in the Regina Pastiera competition, the competition dedicated entirely to this sweet symbol of Easter. Not only that, he also took first place in Regina Colomba, a parallel competition, achieving a historic double that marks the return of Lombard festive pastry making to the national top.
In second and third place were respectively the Pasticceria Cumuniello of Genzano di Lucania (Potenza) and the Pasticceria La Gioia of Taranto, two companies from the South that confirm the high level of southern tradition, despite not managing to reach the top step of the podium this time.
The competition is organized by Stanislao Porzi, the same enthusiast who has been promoting Re Panettone in Milan since 2008, and saw its first edition in 2021. The rules are rigorous: all participants must pass a qualitative pre-selection, the products must be strictly artisanal, made with natural ingredients and in compliance with traditional specifications.
The desserts are presented anonymously and judged by a jury of experts based on aesthetics, aroma, taste, consistency, flavor and faithfulness to the original recipe. The pastiera, unlike panettone and colomba, has an easily perishable filling and must be prepared a maximum of five days before the evaluation.
And for the dove?
Even in the dove category, Caseri proved to be unbeatable. In second place was Pasticceria Memmolo from Mirabella Eclano, in the province of Avellino. Third position for Pasticceria Rizzo in Tarcento, in the province of Udine, demonstrating how Italian artisanal pastry making can express excellence from north to south.
Over the last ten years, pastry chefs from Campania have dominated the competitions dedicated to panettone, Milan’s Christmas dessert par excellence: not by chance, but through talent and authentic dedication. Today, with pastiera, the opposite happens. A Lombard craftsman has been able to master an art born far from his homeland.
And it’s not the first time this has happened: in the previous edition of Regina Pastiera, the winner was the pastry chef Giulia Ripamonti from Vimercate, who had studied the secrets of pastiera directly from a Neapolitan master. In short, tradition is transmitted, learned, carried with it and flourishes even a thousand kilometers from its place of origin.
Ultimately, this is precisely the spirit of Italian cuisine, the boundaries are not rigid, knowledge circulates, mixes and reinvents itself.
