American-made biscotti has often been disappointing. The Italians do it better. – The
Many American bakers started making Italian biscotti in the 1990s, when coffee shops appeared everywhere and we needed a sweet little something to accompany (or dunk into) our freshly brewed cups. At first, the American biscotti weren’t that good because so many bakers who were making them had never tasted them in their country of origin. Eventually, as they grew in familiarity, biscotti incorporated ingredients that had never been seen in Italy: dried cranberries, macadamia nuts, chocolate chips. Please!
Now comes a traditional version, one that works flawlessly and tastes remarkably good, hard and crunchy, perfect for dunking. The only fat comes from eggs and almonds. These Cantucci di Prato are one of many good recipes in Domenica Marchetti’s comprehensive new “Italian Cookies: Authentic Recipes and Sweet Stories from Every Region” (Gibbs Smith Books). Marchetti, who has traveled extensively in Italy, offers these dry, crackly, twice-baked, almond-studded gems from a bakery north of Florence that has been making them since 1858. You should know that in Italy, Marchetti explains, if you say the word “biscotti,” you’re really referring to cookies in general.
Marchetti weaves in all kinds of homey tales that will make you feel like a baking insider. Here are several: There’s a recipe for amaretti made by the same family in Lombardy since the 18th century whose archives are stored in Franciscan cloisters; olive oil and sunflower oil, rather than butter or lard, are common in southern Italian cookies; sugar-dipped cookie rings in south and central-south regions, called ciambelline, are typically made using a glass of red or white wine, a glass of olive oil, a glass of sugar, and enough flour to form a dough.
The book offers recipes for cookies you may have admired in a bakery case here or abroad, such as pizzelle (waffle cookies), which Marchetti grew up eating in Chieti in Abruzzo near the Adriatic coast, her mother’s hometown. You’ll also find the buttery piped cookies popular in Italian American bakeries; they’re called Frollini al Burro and shaped into an S, or made into rounds or wreaths, decorated with chocolate or colored sprinkles or maybe candied cherries. Marchetti traveled to all of Italy’s 20 regions to assemble the recipes in the book.
There are many amaretti here — almonds are an important element in Italian baking — including a simple recipe from Sardinia, made with blanched almonds (they can be hard to find, so you may have to blanch your own). Grind the nuts with sugar and mix with beaten whites. Leave overnight until they stiffen enough to roll into balls and bake with a whole almond on top. I ate these chewy rounds on a visit to Sardinia and was thrilled to reproduce them in my own kitchen.
Marchetti, who divides her time between Abruzzo and Northern Virginia, has a number of books to her credit, among them “Everyday Italian Cookbook,” “Preserving Italy,” and “The Glorious Pasta of Italy.” She leads small tours in Italy.
This book was inspired by a cellophane sack of flower-shaped Ligurian butter cookies called Canestrelletti di Torriglia. The recipe for them first appears in the 15th century. Marchetti tells the story of the cookie saving the town when its population dwindled post-World War II and an association of locals created a list of criteria for all local bakers to follow. Now they’re distributed to Genoa and beyond, and the little town is famous for them.
Another story in the book is about the cookie lady of Trastevere, an ancient neighborhood in Rome, where third-generation Stefania Innocenti runs Biscottificio Artigiano Innocenti. Once a well-kept Roman secret frequented by locals, the 77-year-old establishment is now on social media and has an international clientele, thanks to Innocenti’s savvy daughter and European tour guide Rick Steves.
A former journalist, Marchetti can spot a good story and tell it well. She is also superb at explaining recipes to home bakers. Making her recipes one after another will have your kitchen looking (and smelling) like your own little biscottificio.
At least mine does.
Sheryl Julian can be reached at sheryl.julian@globe.com.