Taralli
Taralli are made with wine instead of water, and that is not a flourish — wine together with plenty of olive oil makes a short, aromatic dough rather than one as hard as a rusk. The second device is a brief boil before baking, exactly as with bagels: gelatinised surface starch gives a smooth, faintly glossy shell.
Your own work in that: 0 min.
- Dough 20 min
- Resting 30 min
- Shaping 20 min
- Boiling 10 min
- Drying 15 min
- Baking 25 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneKnead a stiff wine dough
Mix the flour with the salt and spices, add the wine and oil and knead for 10 minutes. The dough should be hard and tight, almost unyielding — closer to pasta dough than bread dough. A soft dough gives taralli that stay soft in the middle.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 180 ml white wine · 120 ml olive oil · 10 g salt
Hard and tight — like pasta dough.Rest for half an hour
Wrap and leave for 30 minutes. The dough is so stiff that without resting it cannot be rolled into thin ropes — it shrinks back to its previous length under your fingers.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 180 ml white wine · 120 ml olive oil · 10 g salt
Roll ropes and form rings
Divide the dough into 40 pieces of about 20 g and roll each into a rope the thickness of a little finger (about 1 cm) and about 20 cm long. Join each into a ring, overlapping the ends and pressing firmly. Do not make the ropes thicker — a thicker tarallo stays soft inside.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 180 ml white wine · 120 ml olive oil · 10 g salt
Little-finger thick, ends pressed firmly together.Boil in batches until they float
Drop them into boiling water a dozen at a time and lift them out as soon as they rise to the surface, usually after 40–60 seconds. All the batches take about 10 minutes in total. No longer: the starch should gelatinise only at the surface, not through the dough.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 180 ml white wine · 120 ml olive oil · 10 g salt
They floated — lift them out at once.Dry on a cloth
Lay the boiled taralli on a dry cloth in a single layer for 15 minutes. A wet surface steams in the oven instead of baking and the shell never crisps.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 180 ml white wine · 120 ml olive oil · 10 g salt
Bake 25 minutes at 200°C
Lay the taralli on a lined tray and bake in an oven preheated to 200°C for 25–30 minutes, until pale gold and completely dry. Test one: broken, it should snap rather than bend. If it bends, give it 5 minutes more — moisture inside costs you the crispness by the next day.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 180 ml white wine · 120 ml olive oil · 10 g salt
Before you start
They keep a month
In an airtight tin taralli stay good for up to four weeks. Being dry and crisp, they do not go stale the way bread does — which is why it is worth making a double batch.
Other seasonings
Black pepper alone, rosemary, peperoncino or onion powder. In southern Italy they are often seasoned with fennel seed alone — you can use as much as three tablespoons of seeds per half kilo of flour.
Skipping the boil
You can bake them unboiled and they will be good, but shorter and matt, closer to a cracker. Boiling gives the characteristic smooth surface and dense snap.
