Rosquilha d'Argozelo: the Easter ring that keeps a village alive

Head north-east in Portugal to reach Argozelo, a village in the municipality of Vimioso, in Trás-os-Montes. Here people grow wheat, press the oil of the nearby olive groves, and make the rosquilha: a golden dough ring, linked to Easter.

A ring for Easter

The rosquilha of Argozelo is shaped like a crown, not like a celebration cake. The dough is raised, worked by hand, then formed into a circle before it goes into the oven. The village recipes call for flour, leaven, sugar, eggs, butter, olive oil and pork lard. Some families add a little eau-de-vie or orange juice. As far as possible, the ingredients come from the region: flour from the wheat fields, oil from the olive groves.

In Portugal, the word "rosquilha" covers very different sweets. The rosquilhas of Mogadouro, those of Marco de Canaveses or the rosquilha of Porto Santo do not share the same dough or the same shape. The one from Argozelo belongs to Easter, and its reputation rests on that yearly date: orders arrive well before the feast.

Closed mines, a village that reinvents itself

To understand why an Easter sweet became the emblem of a village, look at its recent history. In the 1980s and 1990s, the closure of the tin and wolfram mines plunged Argozelo into serious hardship. António Santos, president of the municipality of Vimioso, describes a resilient and enterprising population that looked for other activities to replace the ones that were disappearing.

The rosquilha is part of that reinvention. In March 2025, residents founded the Confraria da Rosquilha de Argozelo, with three aims: to preserve the know-how, to promote it and to pass it on. Its grand master, Ana Luísa Machado, presents the brotherhood as the way to protect a tradition handed down from generation to generation.

The brotherhood has also had the name registered. The rosquilha of Argozelo is recorded with the National Institute of Industrial Property in Portugal and appears in the inventory of traditional Portuguese products. The product is now tied to the village that makes it.

A fair that draws thousands of visitors

On the weekend of 21 and 22 March 2026, the Feira da Rosquilha once again drew thousands of people to Argozelo. The highlight was the first chapter of the brotherhood, a ceremony that praised the enterprising spirit of the residents. The officials present stressed one point: in Trás-os-Montes, almost every municipality produces olive oil, wine, potatoes, cheese, honey or dried fruit. Each one has to find a product that sets it apart. Argozelo chose its ring.

Regional leaders present the rosquilha as both a gastronomic and a tourist product. They invite visitors to watch it bake in a wood oven, then to taste the sweet on the spot. It is a simple way to understand a tradition that depends on a place, on gestures and on a calendar.

The wood oven and the gesture

The rosquilha is baked in a wood oven, like the village bread. That detail matters: baking over wood is not a show for visitors, it is how the sweet has been made in Argozelo. The dough, the ring shape and the baking form a single whole.

That is what makes these sweet little rings precious. They remind us that Portuguese sweets were for a long time made in homes and village ovens. Brotherhoods such as the one in Argozelo want to keep this know-how for the generations to come.

And in Brussels?

In Brussels, Portuguese pastry has its own story. It arrived with families who came to work in Belgium and settled into the neighbourhoods. At Wooly, in Etterbeek, Stockel, Uccle and Waterloo, our Portuguese pastry chefs work in the same spirit as the people of Argozelo: recipes passed on, gestures that cannot be hurried, products that owe much to the region they come from.

If the ring of Argozelo makes you want to taste Portuguese pastry, drop in at the shop nearest you, or check our shops and their opening hours. For another traditional bread, read our piece on the broa de Avintes, or try the pastel de nata in our shop windows.

Our pastéis de nata, in seven flavours, can also be ordered online, with home delivery in Brussels and to neighbouring countries. For a birthday or a family celebration, we make birthday cakes to order in Brussels.

Sources: Terra de Miranda Notícias, “Argozelo: Feira da Rosquilha mostra o empreendedorismo da vila”.

Photo: bread oven in the Algarve, by muffinn, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.