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Biscotti di Prato (Cantucci)

Name: Biscotti di Prato (Cantucci)
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 30 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 300 g plain flour; 250 g sugar; 3 eggs; 1 egg yolk; 200 g whole almonds; 40 g pine nuts; 2 g salt; 1 egg; 6 g baking powder; 1 orange zest; 1 tsp anise seed; 2 tbsp vin santo

The almond biscuit of Prato in Tuscany. The name is the Latin biscoctus, twice-cooked: baked once as a log, sliced, and baked again. The point is that the second bake is not cooking but drying — the loaf is already done after the first one, and the second exists only to drive water out through the newly cut faces. That is why they keep for months, and it is why the traditional recipe has no butter, no oil and no milk in it at all. The absence of fat is not an omission; it is the condition for keeping.

Steps

Heat the oven to 170°C. Do not toast the almonds first: they get baked twice inside the dough, and pre-toasted they taste bitter by the end of the second bake.
⏲ 10 min
Whisk the 3 eggs, the extra yolk, the sugar and the salt together just until combined. There is nothing to aerate — with no leavening and no fat in this dough, air beaten in does not stay.
⏲ 3 min
Sift in the flour and fold only until it comes together. Fold in the almonds and pine nuts. The dough is wet and sticky, which is right: there is no fat, and flouring your way out of the stickiness makes them harder still.
⏲ 4 min
With wet hands shape the dough into two logs about 6cm wide and 2cm high on baking paper, well apart. They spread sideways, so there is no need to build them tall.
⏲ 5 min
Glaze the tops with beaten egg and bake at 170°C for 25–30 minutes, until pale gold and springy in the middle. At this point the dough is already fully cooked.
⏲ 30 min
Take them out and cool for only 10–15 minutes. They have to be sliced warm. A cold log shatters under the knife and the almonds pull out whole.
⏲ 15 min
With a serrated knife cut 1.5cm slices on the diagonal, in one push each. Sawing back and forth collapses the cut face.
⏲ 5 min
Drop the oven to 150°C, lay the slices cut side up, and bake 15 minutes, then turn them and give 10–15 more. This stage is not for colour, it is for driving water out through the cut faces. They barely change colour, and that is correct.
⏲ 25 min
Cool completely on a rack. Straight from the oven they are still soft; the hardness arrives as they cool. If they are still yielding cold, give them another 5 minutes at 150°C.
⏲ 30 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Cantuccini: the commoner name in Tuscany today, and originally it meant the variants rather than the original — the ones that add yeast, acid or flavourings to make them less dry. Most mass-produced biscotti are closer to these.
With baking powder: the modern standard. It opens the crumb and makes them far less hard, at the cost of how long they keep. The base recipe here follows the Prato original, which has neither leavening nor fat.
The American version with butter: much of what is sold as biscotti in the US contains butter. It is softer, more crumbly and edible without dunking — and it does not keep. Bara brith makes the same point about fat and shelf life.
Other nuts and flavourings: pistachio, hazelnut, anise, orange zest, a chocolate dip. Almonds and hazelnuts are better left in their skins.
The regional cousins: carquinyolis in Catalonia, rosegons in Valencia. In Catalonia the biscuit is also used as an ingredient in sauces — pounded into the sauce for rabbit and for calçots, to give it body.

Tips

The second bake is not cooking, it is drying. After step 5 the dough is already done. All step 8 does is drive water out through the cut faces, which is why the oven comes down from 170°C to 150°C — you are not after colour (what your oven is doing). The other things here that are dried for keeping are dried in air or in the sun — dried persimmon, bugak, takuan, lavash, the qurut in qurutob. An oven does the same job in half an hour, at a temperature you choose rather than one the weather hands you.
The absence of fat is the whole thing. Two reasons. Fat goes rancid over months, so a biscuit meant to keep cannot have any. And fat gets between gluten strands and makes things crumble (dough and gluten); the clean snap only exists because there is none. That is the exact opposite of what scones and Linzer torte want from butter.
Slice them warm. This is where the recipe is most often lost. A cooled log has already gone hard and shatters under the blade. It is the same class of problem as krumkake, whose window is ten seconds; here it is fifteen minutes.
Being hard is not a fault. In Prato they are dipped in vin santo. A biscuit made on the assumption that it will be dunked can be baked that dry, and being that dry is what makes it keep. Twice-baked bread was a Roman legion ration on exactly the same principle.
Almonds skin-on and untoasted. Toasted almonds have to survive two more bakes and end up bitter. Leaving the skins on is the Prato way and gives a better-looking cut face.
Do not judge them until they are cold. They are always soft straight out of the oven. The hardness arrives as they cool and the last of the moisture redistributes.