No. 3279

Grissinis with Sugar

Grissinis au Sucre

Sift a pound of flour on the table, and with a fourth part of it, half an ounce of yeast and a little warm milk make a soft leaven; place this in a deep vessel, cover over and let rise to double its height. Form a ring with the remainder of the flour; in the center put one ounce of salt, two and a half ounces of sugar, two eggs, and one gill of milk; mix all well together, incorporating the flour slowly so as to obtain a rather consistent dough; knead this for a few moments to give it body, then add two ounces of butter, and continue to knead until the butter is thoroughly worked in, finally adding the prepared leaven. Lay this dough in a vessel to rise to double its height, and then place it on a floured table and break it into pieces, having twenty-four of them to the pound; lengthen each piece into even-sized strings nine inches long, place on baking sheets, allow to rise, egg over twice, and bake in a hot oven.

← No. 3278 Grissinis with Butter Breakfast Cakes No. 3280 Oatmeal; Wheaten Grits; Hominy, Boiled →

For the Modern Kitchen

A sweetened, enriched breadstick built on a sponge ("leaven"), from Charles Ranhofer's Delmonico's repertoire. Most of it translates directly; two numbers need attention before you start.

The salt is almost certainly a misprintOne ounce of salt to one pound of flour is roughly 6 percent by weight, three or four times what a bread dough will tolerate, and it would also slow the yeast badly. Read it as about a third of an ounce, or two teaspoons of fine salt.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. The soft leaven takes a little more warm milk beyond that, judged by feel.
YeastHalf an ounce means compressed fresh yeast. Substitute about a teaspoon and a half of instant dry yeast, or two teaspoons of active dry, dissolved in the warm milk for the sponge.
A hot oven425 to 450F. These are thin sticks and colour fast; 10 to 14 minutes is the range, and the sugar means the tops darken before you expect it.
Working the butter in lastThe butter goes in after the dough has body, not with the liquid. Added early it coats the flour and you never develop the gluten needed to roll nine-inch strings that hold their shape.
Twenty-four to the poundAbout 20 grams of dough each. Roll each into a rope nine inches long and space them apart on the sheets.
Egg over twiceBrush with beaten egg, let it set for a few minutes, then brush again. The double coat is what gives the glossy, almost lacquered surface. The recipe places both coats after the sticks have risen, just before baking.
Yield and keepingKeeping -- they are best the day they are baked; the sugar and butter make them soften rather than stay brittle.

A Little History

Grissini are the breadsticks of Turin, and their arrival in a New York cookbook of 1894 says something about how thoroughly Piedmontese and French kitchens had merged in the grand restaurant trade. Tradition traces the form to a seventeenth-century Turin baker who drew bread out into thin, easily digested rods for a sickly young prince of the House of Savoy; the story is repeated everywhere and documented nowhere firmly. What is certain is that by the nineteenth century grissini were a fixture on Italian tables; they are often assumed to have reached Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's, by way of French professional cooking, though that route is inference rather than record. His version here is the enriched, dessert-leaning cousin of the plain stick: eggs, butter and sugar push it toward a breakfast pastry, and it sits in The Epicurean among the muffins and griddle cakes rather than with the breads.