Semolina cornmeal and almond biscotti
Test bake #1
Formula: Hayden heritage grain mill cookbook.
The original formula called for pecan & lemon zest. I substituted almond, and anise oil.
The players are assembled.
The butter and sugar are creamed. Anise oil and vanilla extract added
The dry ingredients are added with care not to over mix. Finally the slivered almonds are added to the batter.
After a 30 minute room temperature rest the batter is divided.
The two portions are shaped into 6"X3" cylinders.
The shaped cookie dough goes into the preheated oven (350°F) for thirty minutes.
After thirty minutes in the oven, they smell amazing. I fear my shaping needed to be tighter. After a fifteen minute cool down while the oven is still on, I will attempt to slice them. Then back into the oven to toast.
Not to bad. I hope they are not too crumbly. Now for a toast of 10 minutes on each side. By the way,they taste as good as they smell.
The end game.
The shape needs work to look more traditional. However, I like it!
Comments
For some reason I can make cannoli, but biscotti intimidates me. But I may try it this year. Do you find that the semolina makes it more delicate than AP flour? I've never used semolina before.
However, I can only compare to store brought. My one try with AO flour was a fail. The formula produces a very wet unmanageable dough. Until now I put them on the back burner.
Time for me to try to make them then. I have a recipe which uses AP flour, so I'll try that first. I'm not sure if I can get semolina at the store, I've seen durum so they may have semolina. I have a recipe somewhere so I'll make a batch this week. Funnily enough, my grandma used AP flour for everything, even her pasta.
However, you want the fine ground. General Mills calls it extra fancy.
I made some last week so I'll make a blog post later on. I used this recipe: https://joyofbaking.com/biscotti/ChocolateAlmondBiscotti.html Mine came out fine, but I didn't toast them enough so they came out pretty light. The dough was sticky, but not too bad. I shaped into logs and cut at a slight angle. They didn't puff up or crack like yours did.
I did find durum flour at the store, Bob's Red Mill, but it doesn't say if it's fancy or not. It looks pretty finely ground, like all purpose flour. I'm only seeing recipes that use half semolina. I'll try it again with 100% semolina.
The Bobs durum sounds right. As long as it doesn't look like a corn meal consistency it is fine for baking. I bet the course ground would make a good bread too. My kids are coming over for Thanksgiving. I am excited to see the grandkids. I hope to get "my" yeasted pumpkin bread made today. Joy of baking is Julia Childs correct? The pumpkin bread formula was originally hers. I converted it to mass measurement, changed the final dough amount, and tweaked the inclusions. I think that makes the result ing formula mine? ( As always with a footnote of props to Julia.) I am also wanting to retry the Semolina biscotti with a TBs or two more water. Thanks for stopping by. Maybe, Logging back in to the bread club will pull me out of my funk. Since last week I have been tired and not feeling like doing much. Before that I was going none stop! What do they call that mood change disorder? From the Hendrix song, manic depression. I think I have that. (Amongst other things) I can't wait to see your biscotti blog.
Kind regards,
Will F
"Joy of baking" is not Julia Child. Also, be careful of self diagnosing. Burnout can look like depression, so can lots of other things. I struggle with a few things (stress among them), but man or man, burnout in my experience can feel like depression. But you know what? That is also an ADHD thing, and anxiety thing, vitamin deficiencies, and probably a few others, plus in some cases it's normal. So don't be hard on yourself, take a break once in a while. You got this, even if you don't right now.