TWICE-BAKED

​When @flourambassador Amy Halloran was looking for a cookie recipe well suited to a discussion about rye flour and rye whiskey, a very specific cookie came to mind. Rye flour, once considered a little too hearty for baked goods, is enjoying a well-deserved Renaissance. Perfectly suited to the nibble-y, crunchy, dunk-able cookies that enjoy not one, but two spins through the oven, rye’s warm flavors complement rustic cookies. A thimbleful of rye whiskey makes a fine sipper alongside or in the manner of dipping biscotti in dessert wine, a fine dipper.

Twice-baked cookies are indelibly etched in my brain’s recipe Rolodex. These are the cookies we slice and bake and bake again. Long before coffee shops taunted us with cello wrapped biscotti boasting a-little-too-long shelf life (and a sure fire way to test the limits of dental work), twice baked cookies were mainstays in kitchens throughout the world. Layered between sheets of waxy paper in cookie tins both ornate and ordinary, my grandmothers appreciated the ‘good keepers’ that Mama Dorothy referred to as rusks while Mama Min called them mandelbrot. Without being overly sweet, the cookies were suitable regardless of the hour, enjoyed with and dipped in hot tea or strong coffee. Following recipes from Mrs. Simon Kander’s The Settlement Cookbook, Jennie Grossinger’s The Art of Jewish Cooking and Florence Kreisler Greenbaum’s The Jewish Cook Book, the cookies were also known as zwieback and toasted slices. Sometimes made with oil (in keeping with kosher dietary laws), other times with butter, the recipes were often flavored with anise, almond or cinnamon. It wasn’t unusual for Dorothy to enjoy candied fruit and ginger with the crunchy rusks, and Minnie to nibble on mandelbrot and Barricini chocolates during a spirited game of canasta. I found the cookies special not because of their taste, but because of the ceremony swirling around them. The tea and the coffee, the nibbling and the dunking.

Long after my grandmothers had passed away, I was working at a restaurant that featured an intricate cookie assortment as one of the dessert offerings. Churning out innumerable logs of biscotti required a sensitive oven timer ear and an eagle eye. One learn's quickly that the fine line between golden and overdone is fleeting. Asbestos fingers were not an option but a requirement. The reward for this time consuming (and stressful) bake was enjoying the cut-off cookie ends, dunking them in lukewarm espresso. (Most bakers and pastry chefs will tell you that the coffee they consume throughout their shift is rarely, if ever, hot.)
 
​Dorothy and Minnie echo through my double-baked cookie recipe. One’s fondness for dried apricots and candied ginger add tartness and heat. The other’s affinity for cornmeal rye bread (plus her requisite candy dish filled with Jordan almonds) conjures warm memories. Which is often the short answer to why bakers bake.