KAF Lemon-Almond Biscotti

We were running out of the Nonni's biscotti and I thought it might be time to try my hand again. However, the Old-Fashioned Biscotti recipe in The King Arthur Baker's Companion calls for three eggs, and we were down to two, so I pulled up this Lemon-Almond Biscotti recipe from the website. They've already blogged it on their Baker's Banter site (We break for biscotti, 30 Apr. 2008), so check out the page for step-by-step pictures (including a mister that looks a little like a blowtorch) and baker comments.

 Ingredients:

Flour: KAF All-Purpose
Sugar: C&H Superfine
Almond extract: Beck's Secret Spoon Pure

Preparation: My own necessary adjustments to the recipe include using prepared dried lemon peel (1:1, according to the label) and (gasp) prepared lemon juice. I was also a little short on almond extract and couldn't go all the way up to the maximum amount, as I wanted to.


The recipe produces a soft dough very similar to unchilled cookie dough (which I guess this more or less is). Using parchment paper helps as you don't have to worry about the dough sticking to the sheet. The trickiest stage is coaxing the dough into a flattened "log" of the right length and thickness. I found that wetting the spatula repeatedly helped the most (good and wet, not just damp). What you end up with will look squarish and cook out into a rounded hump similar to the Baker's Banter picture, so you will have those nice round edges that you've seen on all commercial biscotti.

After taking the biscotti out of the oven after the first bake, I left them to cool for about an hour. I found it unnecessary to mist the log as the recipe suggests -- just go slowly with the serrated knife and, if the dough is cool enough to hold together, you won't have more than a few crumbles. I sliced at a slight diagonal to get longer slices.

The final stage is the "toasting" stage, which dries out the cookies and produces a nice brown edge. You can adjust the second bake according to the thickness of the slices and the desired amount of browning.

Results: After initial cooling, the cookies seem quite dry and crisp. I imagine that they will soften slightly over time, producing the "light and crunchy" cookies that the Banter page describes as "made for eating out of hand."