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Nettle Cappelletti, Folded to 28 mm
By The Dough Table17 Oct 2026

Filled & Folded · Demanding

Nettle Cappelletti, Folded to 28 mm

荨麻小帽饺（cappelletti），28 毫米

Cappelletti are the small cousins of tortellini and demand a 28 mm square — under three centimetres of 0.9 mm sheet, folded around a finger, which is the smallest workable size in this whole repertoire.

Flours
Doppio Zero soft wheat (00)
Egg
Whole eggs and water
Water
43%
Sheet
0.9 mm
Form
28 mm
Drying
Flat on a tray · 2h
Work
100 min + 30 min rest
Serves
5

1The ratio

portions
Nettle Cappelletti, Folded to 28 mm — 5 portions
Flourgbaker’s %
Doppio Zero soft wheat (00)400100%
Egg3 whole eggs43%
water205%
olive oil103%
salt41%
Dough weight584 g43% Water

Per portion ≈ 117 g. Every ratio on this site is a baker’s percentage against the flour weight.

2The roller

0.9mm
  1. 14.8 mm
  2. 24.2 mm
  3. 33.4 mm
  4. 42.6 mm
  5. 52 mm
  6. 61.6 mm
  7. 71.2 mm
  8. 80.9 mm
  9. 90.6 mm

Notch by notch 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → 6 → 7 → 8

Cut at 8 (0.9 mm) → 28 mm Form

3The filling

Nettle, ricotta and pecorino

Flour

  • 300 g young nettle tops, blanched 45 seconds
  • 300 g sheep's ricotta, drained 12 hours
  • 70 g pecorino, grated
  • 1 egg yolk
  • Zest of half a lemon
  • 5 g salt, black pepper

Method

  1. Pick only the top four leaves of each nettle plant. Older leaves are fibrous and carry grit, and their flavour turns metallic after cooking.
  2. Blanch 45 seconds, shock in ice water, then wring hard in a cloth. Nettle holds a surprising amount of water for a leaf.
  3. Chop fine and dry in a pan for 2 minutes, then cool completely.
  4. Beat the ricotta with the pecorino, yolk, lemon zest and salt, and fold in the nettle at the end.

Sauce for this

Nettle and tomato

荨麻番茄

Nettle and tomato is a robust, slightly bitter sauce that can reach into a 28 mm fold. A delicate butter sauce would sit on the outside of these and never get in.

Holds 3% vegetable

Flour

  • 150 g young nettle tops, washed and blanched 30 seconds
  • 400 g tinned San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand
  • 2 garlic cloves, 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp sugar (only if the tomatoes are acidic)
  • 40 g pecorino
  • Basil, added off the heat

Method

  1. Warm the garlic in oil until pale gold, then remove it.
  2. Add the tomatoes and simmer 20 minutes until the sauce no longer tastes of tin.
  3. Chop the blanched nettles and add them for the last 5 minutes.
  4. Off the heat, add basil and pecorino.

Blanching kills the sting but not the iron. Nettle darkens a tomato sauce to a deep brick colour within minutes.

Picking and handling nettles

Pick in April and May, before the plant flowers. Once nettle goes to seed the leaves develop cystoliths — tiny mineral crystals — that survive cooking and give the filling a gritty, chalky texture that no amount of chopping fixes.

Wear gloves when picking raw, and blanch within two hours. Nettle wilts fast and a wilted leaf has already started converting its sugars.

28 mm is a hard limit

Below about 25 mm the filling mass is too small to hold the parcel open while you fold the points round, and you end up with a dense pellet of dough rather than a filled shape. Above 32 mm they are technically tortellini and take twice as long to cook through.

Cut the squares and cover them immediately. At 0.9 mm a 28 mm square becomes unworkably brittle in three minutes in a dry kitchen.

Folding around the finger

Fold the square into a triangle, press the long seam only, then wrap the two points around your little finger and overlap them by 3 mm. A finger smaller than your index finger, because a 28 mm square cannot wrap around an index finger without being stretched.

Press the overlap between thumb and forefinger for a full two seconds. At this size, a quick pinch is not enough; the dough springs back before the seal sets.

Two ways to serve them

In broth, five minutes, with the cooking broth in the bowl — the traditional Christmas morning version.

Or drained and tossed with the nettle and tomato sauce, which is what the pairing below does. In that case cook them in salted water and finish them in the sauce for a full minute so the tomato gets into the folds.

Either way, a bowl of cappelletti should be eaten within four minutes of plating. This shape goes leathery faster than any other filled pasta because of the surface-to-volume ratio.

Drying

  1. Tray them navel-up on semolina, 2 cm apart.
  2. Air-dry 2 hours; the small size means the skin sets quickly and they freeze unusually well.
  3. Freeze on the tray for 3 hours, then bag. Frozen cappelletti go into boiling water with no thawing.
  4. Do not dry them longer than 4 hours; at this size they go brittle straight through.

Keeping Fridge 48 hours, freezer three months — the best freezer shape on the site. Fresh ones dry out past 24 hours in the fridge even under a cloth.

When it goes wrong

Cappelletti taste gritty
Because Nettles picked after flowering, when cystoliths have formed.
Do this Nothing removes them. Pick young tops only, and use this batch in a sauce where the texture is masked by tomato.
Points break when wrapping
Because Squares dried out, or the sheet was rolled below 0.9 mm.
Do this Keep squares under a damp cloth and take only six at a time. Never go to notch 9 for filled pasta.
Seams open in the pot
Because Pressed for less than two seconds.
Do this Count two full seconds on each overlap. It sounds excessive and it is exactly what the shape needs.

Also on the bench