Browse Techniques

Baci di dama—'lady's kisses'—are the elegant sandwich cookies of Piedmont, specifically the town of Tortona, consisting of two small, round, crumbly hazelnut (or almond) cookies joined by a thin layer of dark chocolate. The name refers to their appearance: the two rounded cookie halves pressed together with chocolate resemble a pair of lips meeting in a kiss. These diminutive confections (each complete bacio is barely 3cm across) are among Piedmont's most refined pastry creations, balancing the region's hazelnut tradition with its chocolate heritage in a single, two-bite package. The dough is equal parts ground hazelnuts (Tonda Gentile delle Langhe, naturally), butter, sugar, and flour—a ratio that produces an extraordinarily tender, crumbly texture that shatters at first bite. The ground hazelnuts must be very fine—almost a flour—to achieve the smooth, even dome shape when piped or hand-rolled. Small balls of dough are placed on baking sheets and baked at moderate heat until just barely golden—overbaking makes them hard rather than crumbly. Once cooled, a small dot of melted dark chocolate is placed on the flat side of one cookie, and a second cookie is pressed gently against it, the chocolate acting as both adhesive and flavour bridge. The finished baci must rest until the chocolate sets completely. The eating experience is a precisely engineered sequence: the initial crumble of the hazelnut cookie, the smooth ribbon of chocolate in the centre, then the second cookie dissolving on the tongue. These are biscotti da tè (tea biscuits)—meant to accompany a mid-afternoon espresso or a glass of Moscato d'Asti.

Grissini torinesi are the iconic breadsticks of Turin—long, thin, hand-stretched batons of bread dough baked until completely dry and shatteringly crisp throughout, with no soft interior whatsoever. They are Piedmont's contribution to the world's bread basket and, despite their apparent simplicity, one of Italian baking's most distinctive creations. The origin legend—probably apocryphal but persistent—attributes their invention to a 17th-century Turinese baker named Antonio Brunero, who created them for the sickly young Duke Vittorio Amedeo II, whose delicate constitution required a bread that was fully baked and easily digestible. Whether or not the story is true, grissini became synonymous with Turin and were famously admired by Napoleon, who established a courier service between Paris and Turin specifically to supply himself with 'les petits bâtons de Turin.' The canonical grissini torinesi (stirati) are made from a simple dough of flour, water, olive oil, yeast, malt, and salt, mixed until smooth but not over-developed. Pieces of dough are hand-stretched (stirati—pulled) to 40-80cm in length, the baker holding each piece at both ends and gently pulling and waving it through the air until it achieves the required thinness (roughly the diameter of a pencil). The stretched grissini are baked at high heat until completely dry and golden—there should be no flexible, soft sections. The texture is audibly crisp: breaking a proper grissino produces a clean snap, and biting into one creates a satisfying crunch. Hand-stretched grissini are irregular—slightly thicker in some places, slightly twisted—and this irregularity distinguishes artisanal production from the uniform, machine-made grissini found in plastic bags worldwide (which Turinese purists view with barely concealed contempt).