Carla’s Ciambelline
Gimme biscuits any day. I must have a biscuit with my tea. Ciambelline are truly the friendliest biscuits, no out of reach ingredients and the epitome of frugality. Sophisticated simplicity. Eight test runs over three recipes and I have finally found a ciambelline that has an open crumb, crisp, once dived into tea does not fall apart (move over Rich tea) and has passed the dip-into-wine test too.
Everybody has a recipe and this is mine.
Ciambelline keep well so you might consider to double or even treble the recipe.
Makes 12 ciambelline
(37gr of raw dough rolled out to 18cm)
(For slimmer ciambelline use 20gr of raw dough)
Oven temperature 180c fan approx. 20/25 minutes.
Dry bowl: 250gr 00- plain flour sieved with ½ teaspoon of baking soda
2 good teaspoons of aniseed or fennel seeds or citrus zest or nothing.
Wet bowl: 65gr wine- any colour
65gr light EVO oil or a mix of olive and veggie oil
100gr sugar - I like to use icing sugar for a very silky textured dough but it is also fine to use granulated.
Beat well the ingredients of the wet bowl. Tip the ingredients of the dry bowl into the wet bowl and then grab a soupspoon. Do not beat the content of the bowl but start from the edge of the bowl and go around with the side of the spoon pushing the flour into the center. It is like making scones, the dough is patted and gathered, rather than mixed. Go round and round until the flour has absorbed all the wet stuff. Tip the dough out of the bowl, pat into a log and leave to hydrate for 5 minutes or so. Do not knead it.
For coating the ciambelline before baking:
Start with 40 gr of granulated sugar in a saucer and then do a top up if you need to. Do not start with a lot of sugar because it will become stained with oil.
Split the log into pieces and lightly but swiftly roll it out into the required length. If the dough breaks up gently compact it as you roll it out. Make a loop, drop into the sugar and place onto the baking tray. I only sugar the top side but my friend Stefano does both sides so you could get a crunchy finish on both sides and a bit of caramel action underneath. They need to be fully baked to a good blonde cocker spaniel colour.