Bagheria celebrates the Sfincia di San Giuseppe:

18th edition of the Sfincia Festival

Sunday, March 17, 2024

On Sunday, March 17 from 5 p.m. at Bagheria’s Corso Umberto I, the 18th edition of the Sagra della Sfincia will be held.
Organizing the event is the Patriarch Brotherhood “San Giuseppe” of Bagheria, under the patronage of the City of Bagheria and the Sicilian Regional Assembly
and with the collaboration of the Aurora Study Center.
Providing the sfincie will be: Anni 20, Bacio Bar, Antica Gelateria Eucaliptus, Bar Carmelo, Bar Ester, Bar London, Bar Mirage, Bar Ivano Molinaro, Bar San Pietro, Bar Sicilia and Bar Valentina.
In the City of Villas, which increasingly connotes itself as a City of Taste, Bagheria’s pastry tradition has contributed to the spread of this typical Sicilian dessert, which, among other things, has been officially included in the list of traditional Italian agri-food products (P.A.T) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry (Mipaaf).
It is traditionally eaten on March 19, on Father’s Day during the feast of St. Joseph, considered throughout the island to be the first holiday of the new pre-spring season.
As time has passed, the product has lost its seasonal connection and has become one of the many sweets that we find in the best pastry shops in Palermo on all days of the year.
“The cake” originated historically from the skill of the nuns of the Monastery of the Stigmata in Palermo who handed it down to Palermo’s pastry chefs,
dedicating the cake to St. Joseph, the saint of the humble.
The original recipe was very simple as were the ingredients, later the Palermo pastry chefs enriched the dessert by adding some typically Sicilian ingredients such as ricotta cream, chocolate chips, pistachio grains and candied cherry and orange peel.
Properly in Bagheria, pastry chefs have reworked it, helping to transform a simple dessert into a myth, a legend.
It is important to note how a humble recipe has become an icon of Bagheria pastry and culture.
A dutiful note on the strong devotion to St. Joseph of the Bagherese, deeply felt by the population, which elevated the Patriarch to Patron Saint of the City back in 1658.
The Feast in honor of the Saint, on the traditional date of March 19, is preceded precisely by the novena and the traditional blessing of bread and the sfincia festival,
the sweet specialty prepared on the occasion of the feast.
Recall that the cult of St. Joseph in Bagheria was introduced by Prince Giuseppe Branciforti at the time of the founding of the town.
The nobleman is credited with the construction of a small chapel consecrated to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary inside which was a painting of the Patriarch.
The valuable simulacrum of St. Joseph, depicted holding the infant Jesus, kept in one of the side altars of the Mother Church,
was made by sculptor Filippo Quattrocchi, the following century.