This recipe is coming from an Italian nonna. My friend Daniel’s grandmother has been baking those taralli for countless years and she was kind enough to share her recipe. My past experience with taralli was pretty disappointing, they were missing some of that crunch you want. I mixed my recipe with hers and the final product is amazing!Grazie mille Anna Maria
You need
- 355ml of warm water
- 120ml of whichever vegetable oil
- 1 1/4 tablespoon of salt
- 2 tablespoons of instant yeast or active dry yeast
- 5 cups of flour ( have an extra cup available) *
- Optional: ~5 teaspoon fennel seeds or chili flakes
*Due to various factors ( ex humidity), you may be required to add more than 5 cups of flour.
Instructions
- 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. If you use active dry yeast, add water and yeast and let it sit for 5 minutes then add everything else and 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 ( 1-2 minutes ) . 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 pan with parchment paper. 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.
