WHOLE WHEAT SOURDOUGH BISCOTTI

I love tea, and I drink it every afternoon. When I was working nights on a summer job when I was in college, a friend of mine and I shared tea at four o’clock in the morning, (the night worker’s equivalent of four in the afternoon). When I'm on my cross country motorcycle trips, I also have to have my tea in the afternoon. Sometimes it gets combined with a fuel stop at some truck stop. One reason I got in the habit of stopping at truck stops, was so I could have a good, strong cup of tea. Not a problem at a truck stop, since I can make it myself inside the convenience store. Sometimes I make tea at a rest stop, and sometimes I simply pull off the highway where it's wide enough and brew a good cuppa with my camping stove.

Of course, it’s good to eat a little something with tea to combat the effects of the tea’s tannin. That’s where tea biscuits come in. A favorite accompaniment to tea for me, is biscotti. I prefer my biscotti when it’s not too sweet, and I love almond flavoring. Naturally, I had to find out if biscotti could be made from sourdough. It took a couple of attempts and exploration, but I did come up with something really worth the effort. Hope you’ll give it a try and discover how good sourdough biscotti can be for yourself.

Whole wheat sourdough biscotti

1 cup whole wheat flour

¼ cup thin sourdough starter

¼ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon lemon zest

½ stick butter

½ teaspoon almond extract

1 large egg

¼ cup dried cranberries

¼ cup chopped nuts (pistachio, pine, almond, walnuts or pecans)

 

For a small batch of biscotti, cream a half stick of butter with 1/4 cup of sugar. Add ¼ teaspoon of almond extract to the creamed butter and sugar, and then stir in one large egg, lemon zest and ¼ cup sourdough. Mix thoroughly. The sourdough used here is quite thin. Mix your starter with a little water, if necessary, whipping the mixture with a beater or fork until the sourdough loses its pasty consistency and is evenly incorporated into the liquid.

Add a pinch of salt and a rounded ¼ teaspoon of baking soda to 1 cup whole wheat flour and stir together. Mix the flour into the wet ingredients, sprinkling the flour over the wet ingredients a little at a time until it is all incorporated. Add ¼ cup dried cranberries and ¼ cup pistachio nuts (or chopped walnuts, pine nuts, chopped almonds, or chopped pecans if you prefer) as you incorporate the final bit of flour. Knead the mixture on a floured pastry cloth and form it into a sheet about seven inches by three inches, about ¾ to 1 inch thick.

Bake the dough on parchment paper, or a lightly greased pan, in a 350⁰ oven for thirty to forty minutes until done. Let the loaf cool fifteen minutes to a half hour, then cut it into slices ¾ inch thick. Lay the slices face down on the pan and bake again for another fifteen minutes until the slices are just starting to brown. Let cool, prepare a pot of tea and enjoy.