This recipe comes straight from an Italian nonna. My friend Daniel’s grandmother has been baking these taralli for countless years, and she was kind enough to share her recipe with me. My past attempts at taralli had always been a bit disappointing, missing that satisfying crunch you really want from them.
So I combined my own method with hers, and the result is fantastic. That perfect snap you get when you bite into one, the kind that makes you reach for a second and third without thinking twice, finally showed up.
Grazie mille, Anna Maria.
(Experiment 177) Tarrali
Ingredients
- 355 ml of warm water
- 120 ml of whichever vegetable oil
- 1 1/4 tablespoon of salt
- 2 tablespoons of instant yeast or active dry yeast
- 5 cups of flour Due to various factors ( ex humidity), you may be required to add more than 5 cups of flour.
- Optional: ~5 teaspoon fennel seeds or chili flakes
Instructions
- If you use active dry yeast, add water and yeast and let it sit for 5 minutes then add everything else and mix.
- In a stand mixer bowl with the hook attachment, add the water, oil, salt, yeast, and fennel seeds/chili flakes if you decided to opt for it. Mix.
- Start adding 1 cup of flour at a time and mix at medium speed until it’s all nice. Repeat for 4 cups of flour. At this stage I highly recommend you move to knead on a countertop else you will end up with flour everywhere.
- At this point, you need to feel the dough. You don’t want the dough to be sticky nor dry. So add some more flour until you get the right texture. Again as mentioned, you should dump the dough onto a countertop and start kneading and slowly add flour to get a better “feel”
- When you have a nice ball of dough, pinch a small piece of it ( half a golfball or so) and roll it on an unfloured surface. Starting from the center you press and roll the dough. It will create a long log of dough. You can make it the size you want but I recommend pen size.
- Depending on the shape/size, this could make 1 or 2 tarrali, I make circle one so I chop it in half, pinch each end and it makes me 1 tarrali, repeat with the second half. Repeat until all the dough is shaped.
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add a few tarrali in, don’t overcrowd. Once they float to the top they are ready ( about 20 seconds ) . Put them on a clean dishcloth to absorb excess water. Repeat for about ¼ of the tarrali.
- At this point, preheat the oven at 375F and lay the parboiled tarrali on a cooling rack like this one. Bake at the bottom of the oven for about 30 minutes until golden brown. Due to ovens variation, it could be a bit more.
- While they are baking, parboil a second batch and repeat the process until they are all baked.
You can cook them on pan with parchment paper but it doesnt help cooking evenly.