Several years ago when I owned Philomena Food Company I decided that I wanted to bring the traditional Italian salt and pepper biscuit into my line of products. Now my grandmother probably made the best and most beautiful version of this traditional biscuit that I have ever seen. She painstakingly braided hers into little wreaths. No problem, I thought! I mean what could possibly go wrong? I watched her make them a million times. So off I went to the kitchen I was renting at the time to make several batches of these delights to sell at the local farmers’ market. After about an hour had passed and my kitchen assistant and I had realized that we had made maybe a few dozen of these biscuits and used every swear word that we knew, we realized that this braiding thing was not going to work for us, Grandma had all the time in the world and she wasn’t making these to sell so she could sit and braid all day long, us not so much.
This conundrum got me thinking about the beautiful sweet dunking biscotti that my mom made and so we decided we would take Grandma’s savory recipe and make them look like Mom’s sweet dunkers, genius! We tried it and boom, the perfect marriage! Eventually, we sold them to Whole Foods and Nieman Marcus for their holiday catalog, thank goodness we stopped all that braiding, or I’m pretty sure I would still be there! Anytime I make these everyone goes nuts for them, they are easy and such a wonderful addition to a cheese tray or just alone. I like to spread them with a little goat cheese and sip some Vin Santo, talk about good! A full recipe will yield a lot of these so feel free to cut the recipe in half, which will yield about 4 dozen, give or take. And remember this is a hand-made savory biscotti, they will not all look exactly alike and that is fine, you may also have some of what I like to call “crumb casualties” no problem, use them for croutons (especially the ends) or bread crumbs. Cutlets made with these breadcrumbs will rock your world! And remember a really good bread knife is your friend, I highly recommend the Offset Bread Knife, available @kingarthurbaking.com life-changing!
4T salt
6T pepper
5 T fennel seed
1 1/2 C oil ( I use olive)
2 C warm water
1/2 oz yeast
8 C flour ( I am partial to King Arthur)
1/2 tsp sugar
Measure dry ingredients in bowl and mix. Dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water. Add oil and let rise until double. Sidenote: if the dough seems dry just add a bit of water until it holds together to form the ball.
Once the dough is ready, separate dough into balls, 6 if full batch, 3 if half. Roll each ball into a log that is about 12″ long and about 3′ wide just like you would a sweet biscotti. Bake logs @ 375 for about 30 minutes until lightly brown. Cool completely, I like to leave mine out overnight uncovered and slice and toast the following day. With a very sharp bread knife slice each log into 1 1/2 to 2” slices, lay on a sheet pan, and toast @ 375 for 10-12 minutes on each side or until you get the desired toasty color you like. Set a timer so they don’t burn, I know someone who had to learn that the hard way……
