Biscotti

James and I had to go to Rochester so that he could beat the crap out of the tenants living in his house who were 3 weeks late on the rent. We were staying with some cousins of his who I'd met at a wedding the previous weekend. He said he was bringing some beer, and I decided it would be nice if I baked something for them too. James told me they were "super Italian," and I wanted something relatively easy/non-time consuming to make, so I set my sights on a classic treat: biscotti! If you don't know, biscotti are those small hard bread pieces filled (usually) with fruit and nuts that you eat with coffee. There are about 1000 different kinds, and all are usually simply variations of each other. I wanted to make two different kinds for his cousins, so I found some recipes and altered them a bit to make them more interesting. I made a traditional kind with almonds, raisins and orange and a gingerbread-flavored kind.

I'd never attempted biscotti before, and with an hour and a half until we had to leave I had to work efficiently and with care. Also I halved both the recipes, so I was working with weird measurements like 9/8 cup...I had to simply hope for the best!

Here are all the things I needed for my biscotti. Honestly, they seemed pretty easy: they're essentially a cookie with baking powder in them that you bake until hard. The picture below shows the dough for the almond biscotti:

See? Looks like cookie dough. This dough was pretty moist, like a chocolate chip cookie dough. I lay it out on foil in a 1/2" tall rectangle, brushed with milk, and put in the oven. Pictures below show before and after:

As you can see, the bottom got a bit burnt. This was because I put the dough in while the oven was still preheating. Usually, this doesn't affect anything...however, with this type of cookie it appears that just a few minutes can make a huge difference. My advice is if you're putting it in while the oven is preheating, remove 5 minutes from the baking time and check as it's nearing the end of the baking period.

At this point in time, the dough was thoroughly cooked; one could eat it now. It was springy to the touch and the consistency of a freshly baked bread. However, biscotti are supposed to be crispy, so this wasn't done yet. Now I had to cut it into biscotti-sized portions and put them back in the oven. To cut this, DO NOT take a knife and sweep it across the loaf. This will tear the delicate dough and it will simply collect on the knife and make a very messy and imprecise cut. Simply press the knife into the dough hard, wiggle a little back and forth, and then move down the loaf and repeat. See pictures below:

Because these were a gift, I was anal about the burnt bottom. I ended up scraping the worst of it off with a small knife. But overall it doesn't affect the taste much. What I did was cut it length-wise into about 1" widths and then width-wise into thirds (you want the cookies to be about 1 x4 or so). Then you lay them out and re-bake briefly until crispy:

As you can see, burned them again! :( My advice is that if they don't feel hard after the time goes off, don't necessarily put them in for more time. Let them set a bit and then check when cool.

The other kind I made was the gingerbread biscotti. This dough used both all-purpose flour and whole wheat. With whole wheat there might be husks in the flour, so you really need to sift it first...here's how much I got out of only 1/2 a cup or so!

This dough was totally different in texture. It was thick and crumbly, more sticky...I'd compare it more to a thick pizza dough that you'd have to knead. This was because of the whole wheat flour and the molasses put into it.

Because the dough was denser, this did not need to be baked again after cut. Overall, both were really tasty when we had them with coffee after dinner that night!