CastorisCausa

This is recipe is the result of a lot of research and experimentation that were prompted by time I ate these amazing snacks in Bari. While tarallini (small taralli) are easy to make, their preparation can take up to 3 hours. The quantities below should lead to around 150 tarallini!

Ingredients

• 500 g (4 cups) or white flour (unbleached or bleached)
• 240 ml (1 cup) or white wine
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) or olive oil
• 10 g (1.5 tsp) of table salt (fine grain)
• 10 g (2 tbsp) of fennel seeds

A large clean tea towel will be also needed.

Steps

1. Mix the flour, fennel seeds and salt in a large bowl.

2. Put wine and olive oil in the Step 1 mix, and continue mixing. It's easier with the hands.

3. Once all the ingredients are mixed, hand knead the dough for 15 minutes until it gets smooth.

4. Cover the dough and let it rest at room temperature for 15 minutes.

5. Shape the dough. To make one tarallino, handle the dough with your hands to make a cylinder of ~1 cm of diameter and ~10 cm long. Twist the dough around a finger, to close the loop make flat (squash) one extreme, put the other extreme over the flat one and close over the flat flaps. Repeat until the dough is over, this step can be take up to 1 hour.

6. In a medium size pot (~20 cm diameter) put water (~10 cm high) to boil. Once the water is it bubbling, add ~10 tarallini, enough to use all the pot bottom, but they should not touch each other. After few minutes the tarallini will float, take them out of the water and let them dry in the cloth.

7. Preheat the oven to 205 C (400 F). Place the tarallini in a baking tray, one layer without touching each other. Once the oven is ready, place the tray in the middle rack, and bake the tarallini during 40 minutes.

8. Once baking is over, take the tarallini out and let them rest for at least 30 minutes before eating.

Enjoy!