Tuesday, January 15, 2008

How I bake 295 biscotti in 5.5 hours [long]...

...or how to use 15 cookie sheets for one baking run. Here's a little bit about biscotti and my process. Oh, and that 5.5 hours up there? That doesn't count the time needed to dip them in chocolate.

Biscotti is plural of biscotto, an Italian cookie. Biscotti roughly means "twice-baked" and they are. First you bake them in slabs (loaves), cool the loaves before slicing, and then bake the slices. Typically when you buy pre-made biscotti, they are very hard and must be dipped into coffee, tea, wine, etc. to made them easier to eat.

There are tons of recipes available on the Internet and, of course, in cookbooks. I adapted a really great recipe that I found in a Usenet newsgroup in 1992. It's one of John Trinterud's Intercalary Day Tea recipes and it's a consistent performer. The best part about this recipe is that it produces a biscotti that is firm and crunchy, but not hard as a rock. And, it tastes great! (I found a copy here, but be aware that it is not exactly the recipe I use. Also note that this page has some formatting problems in the ingredients list. I found a better version.)

I won't list all the details because this is already going to be a long post, but here are some of the keys to my process
  • Multi-task
    When I'm baking for Christmas, I use every available minute to prep, clean-up, or start the next batch. For example, when I'm melting the chocolate for the bark, I am either toasting the nuts for biscotti or have cookies queued up to bake.
  • Preparation
    I get as much ready as I possibly can before I start, allowing me to concentrate getting things made rather than searching for stuff. That means that the butter is out of the fridge and at room temperature; the nuts are toasted, measured and chopped, and in bowls ready for use; the other ingredients are on the counter; the mixer, mixing bowls, measuring spoons, measuring cups, and sifter are on the counter; the oven is preheated; the cookie sheets are clean and lined with parchment paper; and the cooling table is covered with cooling racks.
  • Assembly line
    When I'm making biscotti, I make one double batch, get the first cookie sheets in the oven, and make the second double batch of dough. I make all of the doughs and have the loaves queued up to bake, two sheets (four loaves) at a time. When I'm done making the doughs, I start slicing the biscotti loaves from the first batch. I continue to slice biscotti, queuing up the cookie sheets to wait their turn. By the time half of the slices are baked, I can wash the mixing bowls and put things away. Then It's just baking the remaining slices.
  • Concentration
    At Christmas baking time, my family knows not to invade the space I'm using for cookie staging and to pretty much let me do my thing. (As we all know, things go faster when you are not interrupted 50 million times!) I plug my iPod into some speakers and play Christmas music, which makes me happy.
Each double batch makes 4 loaves, which result in 60 to 80 biscotti slices. At the loaf stage, two loaves fit on one cookie sheet and two sheets can bake at one time. At the slice stage, the slices of two loaves take 2 cookie sheets, so 4 cookie sheets for a double batch. 4 double batches need 16 cookie sheets. Since I only have 15, I reuse one from the earliest batch. Now I could wait until some of the cookie sheets cooled and reuse them, but see Multi-task and Assembly Line above—I don't want to waste time. Washing cookie sheets is no big deal...

As for the timing, I started the 4 double batches (Coconut, Espresso, Pistachio-Cranberry, Chocolate Hazelnut) at 2pm and the last two sheets of slices finished baking at 7:30pm: total count was 295. I had already made a double batch of Grand Marnier biscotti earlier in the week, bringing the grand total to 355.

Lest you think that one day I went out and bought 15 cookie sheets, I didn't. They have multiplied over the years. Once upon a time, I only had 4 cookie sheets and had to wait for them to cool in between batches. When I replaced old ones, I'd some times get a deal and buy several or get 3-packs. As the number of cookie sheets increased, I discovered that things went a little faster because I didn't have to wait. I can probably get all the baking done in two weekends; it used to take the better part of two weeks.

As my cookie sheet count increased, so did my cooling rack count. I have 13 of racks (4 extra large)
and I use them all for the biscotti madness! (We won't talk about the number measuring spoons, measuring cups, and rubber spatulas I have...)

More than you wanted to know, right?

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