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Missing a cup of coffee can be deadly but there are just those days when a simple cup of coffee or tea is not enough. There is an itch that needs to be scratched and I doubt you’d want to gravitate towards a regular cookie or biscuits. On those days, all anyone really needs is a warm piece of biscotti (or maybe even two). Now, if you don’t know, a biscotti is a crunchy double-baked biscuit that is entirely created to be a dippable (in tea or coffee) snack.
In general, the cookie is double-baked to withdraw all the moisture from the biscuits to give it its characteristic crunchy texture and to ensure that when it is dipped in coffee it maintains structural integrity and doesn’t fall apart.
As the story goes, the first piece of biscotti was created by Biscotti di Prato in the fourteenth century in the city of Prato. At the time, the “cookie” was made from almonds which were very popular and abundantly available in the region. The twice baking was important to biscotti even some seven hundred years ago. It was done to make the snack sturdy, hard, and since there was no moisture left - resistant to mould. That meant the biscotti could be stored for longer durations. Apparently, due to great storing ability sailors would carry it with them and it is believed that Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered America had an affinity for biscotti.
And soon enough the biscotti found an army of followers across Europe. It was consumed as hardtack in Britain and zwieback in Germany. But even then, it took centuries for the biscotti to reach America and consequently the rest of the world. In the 1990s, when coffee consumption was up, people needed a little something to enjoy with their cup of Joe and then entered the biscotti. They dipped it in chocolate, filled with chocolate chips and pistachios and called it a day.
