Bring on the Biscotti

Add a little "crunch" to your dessert menu with this versatile cookie.
BY KERRY VINCENT

There is nothing more satisfying than a good cup of tea or coffee. The clink of china or the steamy aroma of coffee brewing is an invitation to relax, kick back and savor the moment. And when it comes to choosing an accompaniment for that favorite beverage, biscotti, perfect for dunking, come to mind.

Once considered simply rusk-like cookies, biscotti now come in all guises, including soft centers, decorated or sandwiched, and dipped in chocolate-all a far cry from the traditional almond/anise variety. And a plethora of ingredients can be found in today's biscotti, including walnuts, pine nuts, pecans, cashews, pistachios and filberts.

Texture is added with chocolate slivers, carob chips, or dried cranberries or cherries, and flavor is kicked up with spices such as ginger, cinnamon, caraway seed, clove and vanilla. There is even a shift to savory forms of biscotti, with added hard cheese, to dip in soup as upmarket croutons.

Biscotti are a natural choice to pair with the specialty teas and coffees with which restaurant patrons often choose to end their meals. These versatile cookies also marry well with dessert wines and liqueurs.

Beyond the cookie jar

Innovative chefs use biscotti for more than dipping in tea, coffee or dessert wine, however.

"I was always frustrated with the chips and crumbs of broken biscotti. I hated the waste, and didn't really know what to do with it," says Keegan Gerhard, corporate pastry chef for Las Vegas Gourmet Imports, Inc., and a Food Network host. "So I started grinding them up and using them for the base of cheesecakes, instead of the graham-cracker base so often used. I am not much of a fan of graham crackers anyway, and the recipes I put together were more exotic, so the cheesecakes, in turn, were far tastier."

Gerhard also puts mini biscotti on top of tiramisù served in a martini glass with chocolate decorations and espresso granita.

Jim Fisher, an English chef who owns Cookinfrance, a cooking school in Bombel, in the Dordogne region of southwest France, is a big fan of biscotti. "I love having a stock of biscotti on hand," he says. "They ready to go."

His Cantuccini Biscotti are made for dunking not in a cup of tea or a mug of coffee, but in a glass of cold, sweet dessert wine, such as Banyul Maleterre or a sweet sauterne. He says biscotti are a perfect end to any meal, either served on their own or with a rich dessert such as Chocolate Cups-a mixture of double cream, caster sugar, good-quality dark chocolate, egg yolks, Armagnac or cognac and butter served in small cups.

Fisher says a batch of biscotti is the perfect do-ahead sweet treat. "If you don't have time to cook the biscotti straight away, make the dough, roll it into a fat log, wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze," he says.

"When you're ready to cook it, take it out of the freezer to defrost, and then bake as the recipe directs."

Pipe and bake

Chefs who think house-made biscotti are too much trouble might be good candidates for a biscotti pan invented by Cleveland pastry chef Terry Parello. She had booked a huge order for biscotti wedding favors and needed a faster, more-consistent process for making large batches of the cookie. The pan evolved to meet that kind of growing demand from customers.

At first, she formed channels of disposable aluminum foil and baked the biscotti individually, but it was messy, and she could only use the foil once. She then took her foil mockup to a local sheet-metal producer, and was soon using the first prototype of the pan. Her brother-in-law, an engineer, devised a one-step, nonstick system that saved many hours, and the biscotti pipe-and-bake pan was born.

The pan eliminates much of the traditional intensive labor required in making biscotti-the cutting and second-baking phases. After the ingredients are mixed and inserted into a pastry bag, the dough is piped into the pan, which is designed to distribute heat rapidly and evenly during the baking process for perfectly formed and baked biscotti. After baking, the biscotti slide easily out of the pan, and are ready to be decorated and packaged.

Biscotti basics

Basic biscotti recipes include flour, sugar, eggs and, depending on the recipe, butter. Nuts, spices or dried fruit are added to the dough, which is formed into a square loaf about 1-inch thick, and baked to the point of cookie readiness. The loaf is removed from the oven and cut diagonally into the familiar biscotti shape-rounded top, flat bottom. Slices are arranged cut-side down on a cookie sheet, and returned to the oven to crisp.

A labor-saving approach for smaller batches of biscotti is recommended by Dona Z. Meilach, author of Making Your Own Biscotti and Dunking Delights (Random House, 1996). She says, "Mixing biscotti dough in a bread machine is easy and fast, and cleaning up is oh so quick. It doesn't matter what size machine you have, a 1-pound, 1½- pound, 2-pound or larger. You only mix the ingredients in the pan during the first part of the dough, or manual, cycle. Combine the dry ingredients in a large measuring container so they are ready to pour into the pan as mixing continues. Keep the top open, and add ingredients while the paddle is going, being careful to not spill any into the baking chamber."

Since the demand for biscotti continues to increase, and the profit margin is excellent, it seems reasonable to assume that eliminating some of the labor-intensive steps will make it even more attractive. With an infinite variety of recipes to choose from, and a limitless number of ways to decorate them, biscotti are a tasty, long-lasting alternative sweet, and an excellent way to bring a little bit of Italy into your business.

Biscotti Beginnings

• Biscotto translates from Italian into English as "twice-baked." This dehydrated cookie dates back to the time of Christopher Columbus, when biscotti were served with Tuscan wines, and almost certainly dunked.
• The word "dunk" was coined by a small band of religious immigrants who came to the United States two centuries ago. A derivation of an old German word, "tunken," which means "immerse," it described the religious ceremony of baptism by water. The Italians opt for dunking biscotti in a high-alcohol wine called vino santo,or holy wine.
• The shelf life of biscotti is at least twice that of other cookies, and its invention might have had much to do with preservation before the advent of vacuum-seal containers.

Kerry Vincent is based in Tulsa, Okla.