Antonio Mattei is not a household name. But his twice baked cookies are. Antonio was a pastry chef in the small Tuscan town of Prato and in 1858 began selling his nut-studded Biscotti cookies to an enthusiastic public.
His ingredients were simple...flour, sugar, eggs, and almonds or pine nuts that he purchased from nearby groves. And according to Domenica Marchetti, he defined the biscotti baking method for future generations by shaping the soft dough into wide, flat loaves, then baked, sliced, and baked them again. That's what "biscotti" means in Italian..."twice baked." The double baking yielded dry, hard cookies that could be stored for long period of time and also traveled well.
And today at the Biscottificio Antonio Mattei, you can still purchase his crisp, lightly sweet cookies.
Grazie, Antonio!
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