Nana's Biscotti Recipe - Best Christmas Gift Ever

Nana's Biscottis - not your typical biscotti.

This holiday season I made it my mission to finally get my Nana to teach me how to make her biscotti. These are not your typical and now ubiquitous sweet sugary cookie (see my last recipe entry) but a delicious savoury snack that is somewhere between a pretzel and a bagel. Crunchy and texturally awesome, they are boiled and then baked like a bagel, but they don't remain soft on the inside, they get airy and flakey all at once. And the breaking of the biscotti oval becomes an addictive ritual that nothing can beat. You can sometimes find similar treats called Taralli in Italian specialty stores, but they never seem to be the same - often they are flavoured with anise seed or are sweetened or are just too darn hard and they just aren't the same as my Nana's biscotti.

As a child, I would be given these breadstick-like but sooooooo much better oval shaped "twice-cooked"  treats. They were always around for a snack and we dipped them in coffee/espresso, we dipped them in tea, we dipped them in plain old water (very true and an excellent teething ring) and I adored them. I didn't know how much I'd miss them until I left home and Nana started sending me them in care packages. That's why the recipe is one of the best gifts I've ever received - mostly because Nana took the time to actually measure everything (her recipes usually consist of: "a handful of this" and "a handful of that" and my hands are a very different size than my diminutive Nana's.)

Since Nana doesn't make them very often, I figured I should get her to pass on the knowledge. But that has caused some upset in the family who think that the recipe should remain a family secret but I think they are just too good to keep to ourselves and I've got to spread the biscotti love. 

But be forewarned, I now know why Nana doesn't make them very much anymore - they are über labour intensive. You  have to create a fairly stiff dough, knead it like crazy, roll them out into tiny lengths of dough, boil those, cool those, bake them for 30 minutes and you are done but mulitply that process by a bajillion biscotti and you get tired. 

So here is the recipe. Note: It makes a huge amount, but you could always cut it in half or thirds. Also, although Nana tried her best to actually measure the ingredients, a lot of it was still by eye or feel and I had to guesstimate what was actually going in to the bowl.

Nana's Biscotti

13 cups flour

4 tbsps salt

1/4 c. Crisco

1 1/2 cups luke warm water

1 tsp. sugar in the water

3 tbsp. yeast in the water 

2 eggs whisked 

3/4 cup vegetable oil

Another 2 cups of water

1. Stir salt and flour together. Add crisco and cut up into small bits that will be distributed through the dough as you knead it.

2. Knead dough for 20 minutes. There is a lot of dough, so you can cut it in half and knead the halves separately then put them back together and continue splitting and kneading and putting them back together. 

3. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 5 minutes.

4. Knead again for another 10 minutes more, continuing with the split and put back together method.

5. Roll out the dough into mini-loaves of bread (its best to split the dough in half and keep half in the fridge covered in plastic wrap so it doesn’t rise). 

6.Cut each mini-loaf into inch wide pieces (the size depends on how big you want to make the biscotti - you’ll get a feel for it as you make them). Then roll each little piece out into a long rope-probably about a foot long - loop it around and press the ends together. Nana said she used to use a key to press the two ends together, but if you press your nail into them it works too. Just make sure your nails are clean!

7.While you are rolling out the biscottis put a wide deep pot off water on to boil with about a tbsp. of salt in it. Bring it to a rolling boil and place the rolled out loops of biscotti into the boiling water. They should sink to the bottom of the pot and when they rise up they are done. Remove them from the pot and place them on a clean kitchen cloth to dry. 

8.Set oven to 350 F. When it is to temperature, place the biscotti on the rack - this is important - not on a cookie sheet. The airflow around the biscotti is what makes them crunchy, if you put them on a cookie sheet they will just end up like little bagels - soft and chewy. Bake them for 25-30 minutes, but make sure to watch them, because depending on your oven they could burn. You’ll have to rotate them to keep them cooking even. You want them to end up a deep golden colour on both sides and they will be done. Nana says that depending on your oven you might not have to turn them, but hers bakes unevenly, so we had to move them around from front to back and flip them. 

Note: There are two ways of setting up your biscotti creating assembly line. You can roll out the biscotti and boil them all first, then begin baking them in the oven. Or you can keep the dough in the fridge and only roll out and boil and bake a batch at a time - this method kind of gives you a break in between rolling the loops out.  At the end of it all, Nana puts all the biscotti in a big metal pan and just leaves them in the oven overnight to let them finish drying out.