![]() ![]() Use the same amount the recipe calls for. If you can not find it, regular all-purpose flour will do nicely. Doppio zero flour is available at Italian markets and Amazon. I use a doppio zero flour that is comparable in protein content to our American all-purpose flour. To see the full range of flours available to the Italian cook go to the Molino Caputo website. They just have the added luxury of varying degrees of milling. Just as we have pastry flour, all-purpose flour and bread flour with their varying protein contents, so do the Italians. Any strength flour can be ground into doppio zero. Do not confuse how finely ground the flour is with its protein content. Doppio zero is the most finely milled and feels like talcum powder. This is the tradition of Italy’s beloved nonne at work, the tradition of variation on a theme that makes this cuisine so inviting, so forgiving, and so much fun.įlour in Italy is classified by how finely it is milled, either 1, 0 or 00. You will also find flat squares or rectangles, some with one or two slits along the middle. As to the shape, some are plain ribbons, some are formed into pretzel-like shapes while others are twisted and pinched in the middle. For the finishing touch, some cooks use confectioner’s sugar while others choose cinnamon sugar. Some use orange in place of lemon or no citrus at all. In Tuscany they are often made with olive oil in place of butter, and some regions use lard or shortening. ![]() Some call for grappa, others get their alcohol kick from Gran Marnier, vin santo, white wine or rum while a few eschew spirits altogether. This cookie has a variation for every nonna. Still another source tells us the name originated with the sound the knots make when dropped in the cooking oil – “Pssst !” – just like the town gossip as she summons her listeners. ![]() Some say the name came from the ladies of Lombard and the nuns of Parma who ate them as they gossiped. I don’t know who ate the cookies…” Another of this cookie’s colorful names is chiacchiere or gossips. In fact that is how these cookies got their Piemontese name, bugie – liar’s cookies – as in “No Mamma. My mother could always tell who had done most of the gobbling – the powdered sugar on the guilty party’s hands, face and chest was a dead giveaway. We four kids, my brothers Guy and Marc and my sister Toni and I, loved the cookies and we gobbled them up. We never knew what she had in that box, but we always knew it would be good. Then up our driveway she walked, box in hand, the clack-clack-clack of her Spring-o-lator shoes announcing her approach. When she arrived at our home I could always tell if she had a treat for us instead of exiting her car and making her way directly up our driveway she went first to her passenger door, opened it and removed a long flat box. We called my grandmother Mom, and no typical nonna was she. Like my father, I grew up eating these deep fried delights. Call them what you will, they are fried dough, and I love fried dough. These treats are called galani or frittelle alla Venezia in Venice and the Veneto, crostoli in Friuli, cenci (rags and tatters) or donzelli (young ladies) in Tuscany, frappe in Umbria, sfrappole or lattughe (lettuces) in Emilia-Romagna, chiacchiere (gossips) in Lombardy, chiacchiere di suore (nun’s gossips) in Parma, bugie (lies) in Piemonte and gigi in Sicily. This type of dolci is called nastri delle suore (nun’s ribbons), but that would never do for Italy, a country whose inhabitants identify themselves by regional ties first and as Italians second. Although these delightful pastry knots are the prototypical Carnevale indulgence, they are also served at Christmas, New Year’s and Easter. A recipe even appears in Pellegrino Artusi’s seminal cookbook, L’Arte di Mangiar Bene (The Art of Eating Well), first published in 1891. Italians have been making these treats for hundreds of years. I wasn’t there, but those were his words. So I have no doubt that was what he exclaimed every time he ate the crostoli his mother made in her kitchen at 319 South Sixth Street in their south end neighborhood of Steubenville, Ohio. “Mamma, Che buona!” My father William Anthony Crocetti, born Guglielmo, did not speak English until he went to grade school.
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