“Sammartinelli”: San Martino biscuits

Palermitan tradition par excellence of the feast of San Martino, quick to prepare and to be enjoyed hot next to a good glass of wine, novello!

On 11 November, the feast day, it is Sicilian custom to eat very dry and hard San Martino biscuits, flavored with fennel or anise seeds and then soaked in Pantelleria must.

It is a very ancient custom, linked to the rites of the wine farmers, who on the occasion of the so-called Summer of San Martino saw the new wine ripen, an important source of their economy.

The women then arrived with the recently baked San Martino biscuits and everyone took one and dipped it in new wine, Muscat or some other sweet liqueur wine kept at home for special occasions, in an atmosphere of hope and conviviality.

Do you want to know how they are prepared?

INGREDIENTS:

500 g of flour 00
150 g of granulated sugar
100 g of lard
30 g of brewer’s yeast
20 g of anise seeds
A pinch of salt
Water q.s.

METHOD:

Work the flour with the brewer’s yeast dissolved in warm water and mix with the sugar, lard, salt and aniseed.

Add water until you get a dough with the consistency of bread dough. Cut the dough into small pieces to create upward spiral shapes of about 3 cm in diameter and place them on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Let them rise for at least two hours.

After this time, put the pan in a preheated oven at 200 ° C. After 10 minutes, take the biscuits out of the oven, bring the oven to 160 ° C and bake them again for 20 minutes. At the end of cooking, let the biscuits cool in the oven off so that they can finish cooking and are so perfect to be soaked in the must!

Text and photos from the web.