Sourdough Biscotti

Sourdough biscotti are crunchy, twice-baked Italian cookies made with sourdough discard and your favorite nuts and dried fruits. Perfect served with espresso, dessert wine or a hot cup of coffee, these Italian sourdough biscotti are such a simple way to use your sourdough discard. 

Why You’ll Love This Recipe!

• Use Up Sourdough Discard – Sourdough biscotti uses 150 grams of sourdough discard.  Like a lot of sourdough discard recipes, it’s better to use discard that’s less than 2 weeks old.
• So Many Flavors – I’ve made this recipe with hazelnuts, cranberries and mixed spice – but you can literally add anything you like. From roasted nuts, dried fruits, chocolate chips, lemon and orange zests. Just add what you have! I’ve also given you plenty of flavor variations further down this post.
• Longer Shelf Life – These cookies contain no butter, dairy or oil and have very little moisture after the second bake, which means they last for weeks!

Ingredients

• Sourdough Starter – You can use either sourdough discard or active sourdough starter for this recipe – it will not make any difference.
• Eggs
• Vanilla Extract
• All-purpose Flour
• Granulated Sugar – You can use brown sugar, however I find granulated sugar to be more successful as it has less moisture.
• Hazelnuts – you can substitute these with almonds or any nuts you like, no need to chop them.
• Baking powder
• Mixed Spice – I’ve used cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and cloves. You could also use a ready made spice blend like pumpkin pie spices or even just cinnamon is fine. Use what appeals to you.
• Salt

How To Make Sourdough Biscotti

Making sourdough biscotti is really easy. You can do it using a couple of bowls and dough scraper! You could mix this dough in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment if you want to, but it really is easy to mix by hand. The trick to getting the loveliest sourdough biscotti is baking them twice! This is what gives these Italian biscuits their signature crunchy texture.

Add the sourdough starter, eggs and vanilla to a bowl and whisk together until it’s well combined. In a separate bowl, add all of the dry ingredients and mix until they’re well combined.

Now add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. I like to use a plastic dough scraper to do this. I pull it together into a shaggy dough using the dough scraper, then use my hands to bring the dough into a ball.

Separate the biscotti dough into two portions. Form each portion into a log and place onto a cookie sheet or baking tray lined with parchment paper. I like to weigh the dough and split it into two equal portions around 450 grams to form the logs. This gives you a more uniform size across the two logs. You don’t have to be this exact – it is a rustic Italian recipe after all!  If you are having trouble forming the logs, lightly dust your hands with flour as this will help you to form them more easily.

Bake the logs for around 30 – 35 minutes at 180ºC/350ºF. If you want to, you can egg wash the dough logs and sprinkle with sugar before you bake them. This will give your biscotti a sweet coating. This is completely optional.

Allow the logs to cool for around 15 minutes. You don’t want to cut them while they’re hot straight out of the oven, but you don’t want them to cool completely either. Use a sharp serrated knife to slice the warm biscotti logs into thin slices, around 1 cm (1/2 inch). If you would like longer biscotti, slice the logs on an angle.

Lay the slices face up on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. They can touch because they will not change size from this point.

Bake the slices of biscotti for around 15-20 minutes at 160ºC/320ºF or until they are golden brown and crispy. You want to make sure there’s no moisture left in the cookies as this is what gives them a longer shelf life. Allow the biscotti to cool on a wire rack to finish the process. They will become even crunchier once allowed to cool.

Why Are Sourdough Biscotti Baked Twice?

Biscotti are baked twice to give them an extra crunchy texture. When you slice the logs after the first bake, the biscuits (or cookies) are quite soft. If you did not bake the biscotti twice, they would not last very long because the soft, under baked texture would mold fairly quickly.

Baking them twice completely dries them out, making them last a lot longer. Think of them as “long life cookies”. You can literally store these for weeks without them going bad!

And if they do go a little soft you can quickly bake them off in the oven for five minutes and crisp them up again! Magic, right?

Flavor Variations

I’ve made this simple biscotti recipe using just hazelnuts and vanilla to flavor the dough, however, if you’d like to try something a little different, leave out the hazelnuts and mixed spices. Instead, use these flavor additions:

• Cranberry and Cashew: 100 g of cranberries, 100 g of cashews, finely grated rind of one orange.
• Lemon Biscotti: finely grated rind of 2 lemons, 100 g of flaked almonds
• Lemon and Blueberry: 100 g of dried blueberries, finely grated rind of 2 lemons, 75 g of roasted almonds
• Chocolate Chip: 150 g of your favorite chocolate chips
• Christmas Biscotti: 100 g of pistachio nuts, 100 g of cranberries, 2 teaspoons mixed spice (I love using cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger).
• Apricot and Almond: 100 g of roasted almonds, 100 g of chopped, dried apricots, 1 tsp of almond extract
• Chocolate and Walnut: 100 g of chopped walnuts, 100 g of milk chocolate chips
• Coffee Biscotti: add 100 g of your favorite nuts and 5 g of freshly and very finely ground coffee beans (approx. 1 tablepoon). I love adding pistachios to these!
• Pumpkin Spice Biscotti: add 2 teaspoons of pumpkin spice to this recipe.
• Pecan and Dark Chocolate: 100 g of chopped pecans and 50 g of dark chocolate chunks.

You can see in the photo below I’ve drizzled a few biscotti with some melted chocolate and sprinkled with flakey sea salt. This gives them a lovely twist and is perfect if you are gifting them!

How To Store + Freeze

Sourdough biscotti will last for a long time stored in an airtight container at room temperature. I find they last longer when stored in a glass jar or cookie tin. Plastic tends to make them go soft.

Sourdough biscotti literally last for weeks! You can freeze sourdough biscotti, but I find they are best frozen after the first bake. Wrap the baked logs in foil and then into a resealable plastic bag. Once thawed, you can slice them and continue with the second baking.

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