Cantucci di Prato

Americans call every Italian cookie a biscotti. This is incorrect. Biscotti means twice-baked, and it describes a method, not a category. These are the biscotti, the ones from Prato that gave the name to everything that followed. Every almond cookie you have eaten in a coffee shop owes its existence to this recipe.

Traditional cantucci contain no butter and no oil. This shocks Americans, who believe fat is essential to baked goods. The Pratesi knew better. The absence of fat creates a cookie that shatters cleanly, that keeps for weeks in a tin, that softens perfectly when dipped in wine. The fat would make them tender. Tender is not what we want.

They are meant to be hard. I say this because invariably someone will write to tell me their cookies came out too crunchy. They did not. They came out correct. The hardness is the point. You dip them in Vin Santo, the amber dessert wine of Tuscany, and you hold them there for a moment. The wine soaks into the crumb. The almond releases its perfume. You eat them before they fall apart. This is the ritual. This is what the textile workers of Prato have done since their great-grandmothers taught them.