THE CRESCENTINA MEDAL

The Crescentina Medal – A Tribute to Modena’s Traditional Recipe

My girlfriend asked me to make some medal-shaped crescentine 🥇🥖
She wanted them as fun prizes for a scout game — so I created the Crescentina Medal!

🥖 A Bit of History: The Crescentina from the Modenese Apennines

The CRESCENTINA, also known as tigella (named after the original cooking mold), is a traditional baked bread from the Modenese Apennines, especially around towns like Pavullo nel Frignano, Zocca, Montese, Lama Mocogno, and nearby mountain villages.

📜 Humble Origins

Crescentine go way back in time — they were a peasant bread, made with just a few simple ingredients: flour, water, and a pinch of salt.
Back then, many homes didn’t have ovens, so people cooked them over the fire using terracotta disks called "TIGELLE", layering them with dough and hot embers.

🔥 The “Tigella”

Originally, tigella referred to the terracotta mold itself — not the bread! These molds were often decorated with floral or geometric patterns that left marks on the dough during cooking.
Nowadays, the bread itself is commonly called tigella, but the proper name is still crescentina, from the Italian verb crescere (to grow), because it puffs up when cooking!

🧈 What do you eat it with?

Traditionally, you slice a crescentina open and fill it with "cunza" — a flavorful mix of lard, garlic, and rosemary, often topped with grated Parmigiano. These days, people also fill them with cold cuts, cheese, and even sweet stuff. Yum! 😋

🏅 Recognition

The Crescentina from the Modenese Apennines is officially recognized as a traditional Italian food product (PAT) and celebrated in many local festivals. Over time, it’s become a beloved symbol of Emilian cuisine, well-known far beyond the region.

Now, back to the medal! 😄

I created this simple model as a disc with one of the classic stamped patterns (like the one my mom used — the one I grew up with). During baking, that stamp would leave marks on both sides of the bread.
I added a loop to thread a string through so it can be worn as a neck medal.

For the print, I used buttery yellow and chocolate matte PLA and placed the “burnt” side face-down. The burn pattern is 0.8 mm thick, so you can easily achieve it with a few color swaps!

I’ll include two print profiles:

• One as a medal version
• One as just a crescentina replica