Biscotti is a traditional Italian cookie. The name is formed from two roots: bi is "two", and "scottare" is an oven, i.e. this confectionery is baked twice... First baked, and then also dried. Excellent, tasty and long-lasting pastries for tea, coffee, cocoa, milk, i.e. for almost any drink.
It is believed that classic biscotti is almond, and in general, the filling in biscotti can be very different: any nuts, various dried fruits, natural flavors (coffee, zest, vanilla, cocoa ...), etc. In various sources, I came across both lubricating the dough before baking biscotti with protein and yolk. Chose the option - protein!
Prepare the ingredients according to the list:
Rinse raisins and soak in water.
Mix one egg and the yolk of the second egg with a fork. Leave the second protein to lubricate the dough before baking the blanks.
Combine flour, sugar and baking powder, mix.
Add eggs, ice water and knead the dough.
The dough will turn out pretty cool.
If almonds or other nuts are not toasted, then fry, or rather, dry them in a pan until browned. In my version, the purchased almonds were already prepared. Add nuts to the dough. Drain the liquid from the raisins, dry them, sprinkle with flour and also add to the dough.
Mix the filling evenly with the dough.
Shape the dough into two "sausages" with a diameter of about four cm, place them on a greased baking sheet, flatten a little and grease the surface with the stirred protein.
Place the blanks in an oven preheated to 175-180 degrees for half an hour.
Cool the biscotti blanks and then cut into slices about 1 cm thick. Lay again on a baking sheet and place in the oven until browned, this is about 10-15 minutes.
Italian biscotti cookies, fragrant and tasty, are ready. I should note that this is a hard cookie, it is usually dipped in the drinks with which it is served, or you can just nibble ...))
Biscotti can be stored for quite a long time in boxes or in jars without access to moisture.
Happy tea!
Sift flour into a bowl with baking powder, add a pinch of salt. Cut the cold butter into cubes, then put it in the bowl of a food processor, add sugar and grind everything into crumbs.
Add the eggs to the butter while continuing to beat. Then add flour little by little. Add chopped nuts and raisins. Knead the resulting dough well on a floured surface, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 180 gr.S. Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Take the dough out of the refrigerator, knead it again, and shape it into a flat loaf. Transfer the dough to a baking sheet, send in the oven for 15 minutes.
Take the tray out of the oven. Cut the loaf into slices 1-2 cm thick. Spread the resulting cookies on a baking sheet with the cut side up and send it back to the oven, bake for another 10-15 minutes.
Cool the finished cookies a little, pour with melted white chocolate or brush with peanut butter. If desired, you can decorate the delicacy by sprinkling nuts or raisins on top.
Enjoy your meal!
What is biscotti
The word "biscotti" is the plural of "biscotto", which means "baked twice" in Latin. The method of making biscotti has not changed - they are still baked twice. First, long loaves are baked, then they are cut crosswise into convenient slices and baked again to dry and make them crispy. By the way, the biscuit familiar to everyone got its name from biscotti, but did not retain the main principle of preparation - biscuits are baked only once and remain soft.
History of biscotti
Biscotti croutons are not as simple as they seem. Their history goes back at least 2000 years. Roman legionnaires ate biscotti during their long campaigns, and Pliny the Elder believed that these crackers would remain edible for many centuries. Christopher Columbus took a large supply of biscotti on his expeditions, so they participated in the discovery of America. For centuries, biscotti and their ancient Egyptian and Roman ancestors have been the main way to preserve bread during long journeys and to feed a large army or merchant ship's crew. For long expeditions, crackers began to be harvested six months in advance and baked 4 times to dry completely. After that, they were not afraid of heat and cold, sea water, rain and mold. There is evidence that a sailor of the Spanish Armada in the 16th century received 450 g of crackers every day and beer to soak them.
Varieties of biscotti
The basic recipe, which was written down in the 19th century by the Italian confectioner Antonio Mattei, contained only 3 main ingredients: flour, sugar, and eggs. Pine nuts and whole unshelled almonds have traditionally been used as additives for biscotti. Such simple almond biscotti is still being prepared in the city of Prato in Tuscany. They are usually served after dinner, accompanied by freshly squeezed orange juice.
Now there are many recipes for biscotti, and in every Italian cafe you can find several varieties to choose from. Cinnamon, anise, orange peel, pistachios, hazelnuts, seeds, fruits and dried fruits, chocolate pieces, various liqueurs and extracts are added to the biscotti dough. Biscotti are covered with chocolate and icing, so that they look no less attractive than cakes.
In Italy, biscotti can also be called cantuccini or cantucci, which can be translated as "coffee bread". Under the word cantucci, crackers are also hidden, but prepared according to a different recipe: from yeast pastry or with the addition of sour ingredients. Cantucci are more airy, but also drier than biscotti. Such croutons are traditionally prepared in Sardinia and Sicily. The confusion began because of the confectioner Antonio Mattei, on the sign of which both names were written. In addition to biscotti and cantuccini in Italy, there are also ordinary crackers, baked twice - large, savory, cooked in olive oil with spices. Italian biscotti or twice-baked biscotti has many relatives around the world: Spanish carquinoli, German zwiebeck, Jewish mandelbrod. And in America, the word “biscuit” does not mean a soft cake layer at all, but the same crispy biscotti.
What do you eat biscotti with?
No matter how delicious biscotti are, in essence they are hard crackers. Therefore, they are never served separately from drinks. In Italy, there is a whole ritual: to relax after dinner with a glass of red wine, dipping biscotti or cantucci into it. In Catalonia, dessert wines are used for these purposes - Muscat or Muscatel. Puddings are prepared from biscotti pieces, soaking them with milk and something sweet. Soups are thickened with pieces of unsweetened biscotti, they are added to meat stews, sauces and fillings. In France and the United States, biscotti is dipped in coffee, tea, milk or juice, and in South America you can find locals using mate for this purpose.
Biscotti Recipes
Classic almond biscotti
Ingredients:
280 g wheat flour
130 g sugar
100 g whole almonds,
50 g raisins,
3 eggs,
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
Cooking:
Preheat oven to 175ºC. Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Sift flour, add salt, sugar and baking powder. Beat the eggs until fluffy, pour into the flour mixture and knead the dough. Add almonds and raisins, knead the dough again with your hands, divide into 3 parts and put them on a baking sheet. The dough will be sticky, so wash your hands and with wet hands shape it into oblong loaves the entire width of the baking sheet. Bake the loaves for about 20 minutes until crispy.
Cut the loaves that have cooled slightly diagonally into 1-1.5 cm pieces. Use a serrated knife to cut the almonds evenly. Place the biscotti on a baking sheet and return to the oven for 15-25 minutes, depending on thickness and desired consistency. If you want soft center biscotti, bake for 15 minutes. For completely dry crispy biscotti, increase the rebake time to 25 minutes.
apple biscotti
Ingredients:
400 g flour
200 g sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt,
3 eggs + 1 yolk,
2 tsp cinnamon,
100 g fresh apples,
100 g raisins,
50 g walnuts
Cooking:
Beat eggs and yolk with sugar. Sift the flour, add the baking powder and salt and gradually add this mixture to the eggs, continuing to beat at low speed. Cut the peeled apples into cubes, mix with raisins and chopped nuts and mix into the dough. Divide the dough into 2-3 parts, form logs out of them, put them on a baking sheet covered with paper and bake for 20-25 minutes at 170º. When the bars are completely cool, cut them into slices about 1 cm wide, sprinkle with water and return to the oven for another 10-15 minutes. Apple biscotti does not keep for a long time, as water remains in the apple slices. It is advisable to eat them in 1-2 days.
Ginger biscotti
Ingredients:
2 cups of flour,
0.5 cup sugar
zest of 1 lemon,
1 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
1 cup almonds
0.3 cup fresh grated ginger root
3 eggs,
cinnamon, sugar for sprinkling
Cooking:
Mix the sifted flour, sugar, zest, baking powder and salt. Whisk eggs, add to dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Add ginger and almonds, mix again. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead until no longer sticky. Divide the dough into 2-3 parts, shape them into long loaves, put them on a baking sheet covered with paper, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon and bake for 15-25 minutes at a temperature of 180º.
Cool the loaves on a wire rack. Cut them diagonally into slices about 1 cm wide, place on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 more minutes. Let the biscotti cool completely before packing into the container.
Quick shortbread biscotti
Ingredients:
200 g butter,
1 cup of sugar,
3 eggs,
1 tsp baking powder
3.5-4 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
Cooking:
Melt the butter, mix with sugar, eggs and baking powder. Gradually add the sifted flour until you get a firm, non-sticky dough. Roll out the dough into 3-4 sausages across the entire width of the baking sheet, sprinkle the top with cinnamon and bake on parchment for 15-20 minutes at a temperature of 190ºС. Cool the blanks a little, cut into slices 1.5-2 cm wide, put on a baking sheet and bake for another 10 minutes on each side. Cool the finished biscotti on a wire rack.
Chocolate covered orange biscotti
Ingredients:
2 cups of flour,
1 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp soda,
0.3 tsp salt,
0.5 cup sugar
3 eggs,
3 tbsp honey,
2 tbsp orange peel,
250 g chocolate.
Cooking:
Preheat oven to 175ºC. Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Mix the sifted flour, salt, soda and baking powder. Beat eggs with sugar, add honey and zest, mix. Add flour mixture, stir thoroughly until smooth. Dust your hands with flour, divide the dough in half, place on a baking sheet and form 2 long loaves. Bake them for 30-35 minutes, until golden brown and cracked on top.
Cool the loaves completely and cut with a bread knife into slices 1.5-2 cm wide. Put the crackers on a baking sheet and bake at 160ºС for another 15 minutes. Turn the breadcrumbs halfway through baking to the other side. While the finished crackers are cooling on a wire rack, melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a water bath on the stove. Dip the top of each cracker into the chocolate and place the crumbs upright on the dry side so the chocolate can drip freely. Once the chocolate has completely set, transfer the biscotti to an airtight container.
A popular Italian confection is dry biscuits with the common name biscotti. Oblong and slightly curved slices of sliced biscuits, literally - "twice-baked" cookies. Biscotto, biscotto - this is the name of cookies in Italy.
In the region of Tuscany, in Florence, a special type of this cookie is baked - cantucci (cantuccini). The traditional recipe for this cookie does not contain fat, baking powder, yeast. Therefore, the cookies turn out dry, which is important. The original recipe for these cookies uses only almonds, although various nuts, candied fruits, candied fruits and raisins are usually added. In addition, the finished cookies are dipped in chocolate and, after it hardens, the product is stored for a very long time.
In the world, this type of cookie is known as biscotti di Prato. Served with drinks - coffee or tea, but more often with sweet wine or. In the East, similar macaroons are baked -. This is a special very dry pastry in the form of small discs, made from almond dough with oriental spices, unusually fragrant and spicy.
In Italy, almost any double-baked biscuit is called this, although only macaroons have their own name - cantucci. This culinary masterpiece has an ancient history. Back in the days of the Roman Empire, dry cookies were baked for hiking - they can be stored for a very long time and not deteriorate. In ancient handwritten texts, there are recipes for similar cookies, and only in the middle of the 19th century, the Italian Antonio Mattei, a confectioner from Prato, published a recipe that became “classic”.
The essence of the cooking process is a baked thin "baguette" of dough, still hot, cut into narrow strips, and re-placed in the oven for final drying. After that, the cookies can be stored for several months.
Modern versions of cookies are prepared according to different, do not resemble each other, recipes. Although the mass production of cookies is closer to almond cantucci. Modern homemade cookies, in addition to almonds, usually contain various nuts (hazelnuts, peanuts and pine nuts). As well as spices - anise, ginger or cinnamon. In addition, chocolate icing is often found.
We have prepared this amazing pastry using several types of nuts and fruits, without the use of fat and baking powder. Extraordinarily tasty dry biscuits - ideal for tea, coffee or orange juice. For the recipe, special thanks to my daughter Yulia, she has a talent for baking.
Ingredients (20-25 pcs)
- Wheat flour 2.5-3 cups (325 g)
- Eggs 5 pcs
- Sugar 1 cup
- Raisins (pitted) 100 g
- Almonds 100 g
- Hazelnut 100 g
- Dried cranberries 100 g
- Lemon candied fruits 50 g
- Kiwi or pomelo candied fruit 50 g
- Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg taste
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Biscotti. Step by step recipe
- By and large, it is enough to use only almonds. But for home and family, you always want bright and colorful, carnival and colorful. To hell with the classics! We will bake dry cookies using different nuts and candied fruits. It is advisable, in addition to almonds, to add: hazelnuts, raisins and colorful candied fruits - yellow lemon, red cranberries, green kiwi or pomelo. At your discretion. The composition and amount of additives can vary widely.
Nuts and Candied Fruits for Amazing Cookies
- First you need to chop large candied fruits with a knife so that the size of all the pieces is approximately the same as raisins and cranberries. Mix raisins, cranberries and candied fruits in a bowl. Pour boiling water from the kettle for 10 minutes to soften the hard pieces. Then put the mixture in a colander and squeeze lightly. The water must drain completely.
Mix raisins, cranberries and candied fruits in a bowl, pour boiling water over
- Prepare cookie dough. Mix the contents of 4 eggs and 1 cup of sugar in a mixer bowl. Beat eggs with sugar until a dense foam forms. Approximately the same as used for cream.
Mix sugar and eggs
- Mix spices in a bowl. For such a quantity of ingredients, I advise you to use 0.5 tsp. ground cinnamon and ginger, 1-2 pinches of ground nutmeg. Pour the spice mixture into the beaten eggs and mix again with a mixer.
Beat eggs with sugar and add spices
- Sift the flour through a sieve to weed out all the excess and prevent the formation of lumps in the dough. Continuing to mix the beaten eggs with a mixer, add flour. Flour, in the end, you need 2 cups and another full tablespoon. In general, this is approximately 350 gr.
Add flour and make dough
- The final dough should not be dense, but not fluid. Something close to very thick honey. If you take the dough in a spoon and lift it, the dough should slowly stretch under its own weight. If the dough is more liquid, you need to add flour - quite a bit to adjust the viscosity.
The final dough should not be dense
- Water is already glassed from candied fruits, but, in any case, they are wet. Therefore, in order for the biscotti dough to envelop the candied fruits, add 1 tsp to them. flour and mix. This is guaranteed to ensure the adhesion of the dough with candied fruits.
Candied fruit mixed with flour
- Pour candied fruits into the dough, add whole nuts - hazelnuts and almonds. In principle, although many insist on this, it is not worth peeling nuts from the shell. However, as you wish.
Pour candied fruits into the dough, add whole nuts
- With a spatula, carefully and thoroughly mix the thick dough with nuts and candied fruits. By the way, mixing requires some effort, since the mixture is very viscous.
Gently and thoroughly mix the thick dough with a spatula.
- The finished dough may contain up to half of nuts and candied fruits by volume. In appearance, it is somewhat reminiscent of Olivier salad, abundantly watered with hated mayonnaise.
The finished dough may contain up to half of nuts and candied fruits
- Line a suitable size metal baking sheet with parchment paper and sprinkle with flour. Put the dough on a baking sheet, in a kind of French baguette - for the entire length of the baking sheet.
- Sprinkling flour on your hands, form with your hands an oblong, similar to a pie. Do not try to make geometrically correct shapes - this is superfluous.
Lay out the dough on a baking sheet
- Sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour, generously enough and without skipping sections. This is necessary for greasing before baking. Beat one egg with a fork until smooth. Using a brush, brush the entire surface of the dough with the egg.
Sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour
- Preheat the oven to 210-220 degrees and put a baking sheet with dough in it. The time of the first stage of baking is about 30 minutes. It is necessary to be guided by the browning of the crust, smeared with an egg - you can not let it burn.
The time of the first stage of baking is about 30 minutes
- After the end of the first stage of baking, remove from the oven and, without delay, while the dough is still hot, cut it across into plates 15-20 mm thick.
Take the cookies out of the oven and cut
- In fact, cookies can be thicker or thinner, if desired. But it is worth remembering that this is a dry product, and it is necessary that it dry during the second stage of baking.
Bi- translated from Italian two, scottare- means to bake, it is these two words that form and characterize such a delicious dish in Italian dessert cuisine as Biscotti. Biscotti cookies are quite dry due to their double-bakedness, but it is this detail that gives the taste to this pastry. We will tell you the recipe for biscotti in the classic variation of cooking, we will tell you how the famous TV chef Yulia Vysotskaya does it.
The best variations of Italian biscotti
It must be said right away that biscotti cookies certainly require drinking in tandem with them some kind of drink - it can be absolutely any drink - coffee, tea, juice. If you eat this pastry dry, then you will get the impression that you are eating a simple cracker. And now you can move on to variations of the best recipes for this Italian pastry, which are easy to master at home.
Classic biscotti recipe
Cooking according to this recipe will take you an hour and a half, and the process is not so fast, but delicious crispy pastries will make you forget about the time spent. First of all, you and I need to get acquainted with the ingredients that are included in the classic biscotti recipe:
- A glass with a small slide of flour.
- Half a teaspoon of baking powder.
- 30 gr. freshly ground coffee beans.
- A handful of unshelled walnuts.
- 3 chicken eggs.
- Zest from one large orange.
- A handful of raisins.
- 150 gr. powdered sugar.
- Salt on the tip of a knife.
Cooking cookies according to the classic recipe
All products are simple and available in any store, the process of cooking these cookies is just as simple, this cooking does not have any special tricks.
Now our instruction of culinary "maneuvers", proceed step by step:
- Sift all the flour through a sieve into a deep bowl, pour salt, baking powder, ground coffee beans into the same bowl.
- Now we grind raisins with nuts with a blender, pour this nutritious “mixture” into a bowl of flour and begin to mix all the components into one mass.
- We take a bowl and pour powdered sugar into it, as well as break chicken eggs, beat a little with a blender. Then pour in the orange zest and beat again a little. The resulting "liquid" is poured into a bowl where the "loose" ingredients are mixed, knead everything well.
- We divide the resulting test mass into four identical pieces, and then roll them up like loaves.
- We warm up the oven, setting the temperature to 180 degrees, take out the baking sheet until it is hot and cover it with a sheet of baking paper - parchment. We place all the test loaves on the spread parchment and send them to bake for 20 minutes in the oven.
- When 20 minutes are up, take out the baking sheet and let the blanks cool for 10 minutes, and then cut all the blanks into cookies. Sliced cookies are again laid out all over the parchment and returned to the oven for 8 minutes. Eight minutes have elapsed, it's time to turn the Italian biscotti on the other side and bake for another 8 minutes.
At the end of the second "eight-minute" pull out the baking sheet and put all the "beauty" in a suitable bowl, pour yourself coffee or another favorite drink, and eat with appetite!
Recipe for biscuit cookies from Yulia Vysotskaya
Yulia Vysotskaya prepares this pastry according to a slightly different recipe, now we will share it with you. The recipe from the TV presenter is simple and you can easily cope with it yourself, armed with our culinary recommendations. First, of course, the list of necessary products for the creation of this dessert baking:
- A glass with a small mountain of wheat flour.
- Cornmeal-150 gr.
- A little less than a glass of granulated sugar.
- 3 chicken eggs.
- Soda, you can replace it with baking powder - 2/3 teaspoon.
- Vanilla sachet.
- A sachet of cinnamon.
- 30 ml of lemon juice - this is necessary for those who use soda.
- Almonds, dates, hazelnuts, prunes, dried apricots, chocolate, raisins - you add these ingredients according to your preference.
Cooking biscotti cookies according to the recipe of the famous presenter
Filled with nuts and other hearty ingredients, these biscotti cookies take almost the same amount of time as the previous baking variation. The scheme of actions is as follows, we follow it step by step:
- We put all the listed dried fruits and nuts in a bowl and pour boiling water to soften. The mixture is softened, cut it all into small pieces. Grind the nuts with a blender.
- Mix sugar with flour, then add soda slaked with lemon juice, mix everything again.
- Break chicken eggs into a bowl and pour vanilla and cinnamon, mix. Pour the egg slurry with seasonings into flour and knead the dough, the dough should turn out to be elastic.
- Pour crushed nuts and dried fruits to the dough, knead everything.
- Sprinkle the table with a small amount of flour and pour out the dough, knead well, and then divide it into 2 identical lumps and form dough sausages 25 cm long from the lumps.
- We roll out a sheet of parchment on a baking sheet and lay out the “sausages”. We heat the oven at a temperature of 180 degrees. We bake future biscotti for 25 minutes. The time has elapsed, take out the baking sheet and cool the pastry for 10 minutes.
- We cut each sausage into neat cookies, cut obliquely, so the pastries will be more beautiful. Re-send the pastries to bake for 10 minutes, 10 minutes left, turn the cookies over and bake the unbaked side for 10 minutes.
The cooking timer ticked off, we take out the baked, crispy deliciousness and place it on a wide bowl. Do you remember that biscotti plus a fragrant drink is an indispensable combination, eating these cookies dry is boring!
Video: "Biscotti" from Yulia Vysotskaya
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