Lemon Pistachio Biscotti for a bright crunchy coffee time

I will never pass up a chance to dunk lemon pistachio biscotti in my coffee; with vivid green and bright citrus flavor with a distinctive crunch, they’re plain addictive.

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That they keep for weeks (if they last) and take just about 10 minutes to get them into the oven is even better. Work once, have a treat for a long time. That’s Italian efficiency here, and I for one am grateful for the legions of nonnas who taught us that biscotti were delightful.

As much as I love anise biscotti and ones loaded up with almonds, lemon pistachio biscotti will always be my first choice. They’re pretty and I’m a sucker for anything pistachio. See my pistachio butter for evidence! Shoot, I’d probably spread pistachio butter ON my biscotti and then dunk it because that’s how I roll.

Regardless, you’ll love how easy these are to put together. Overall, biscotti are the kind of hands-off kind of cookie you need after the cookie baking spree of the Christmas season.

Let’s bake em twice.

Lemon Pistachio Biscotti

What are biscotti anyhow?

Biscotti are an Italian cookie, that is not terribly sweet, filled with nuts, and shaped into a log before cutting into slices. The name “biscotti” means “twice baked” and is biscotto in the singular. As Americans we usually say biscotti regardless.

Once the log of dough is baked once, it is cooled, then cut into slices. The slices then get baked a second time to dry out the biscotti, ensuring that they can be kept for long periods of time. There’s a whole family of breads from across the world (rusks, zwieback, friselle, paximadia, many Scandinavian rye breads etc) that are baked similarly in times when people needed to be efficient with their use of fuel in baking. A round of biscotti or these types of bread could be baked and dried out in the last bits of a fire without any loss of quality.

Traditionally, the only fat in biscotti comes from nuts, and from eggs which also bind the dough together. You will see modern versions with butter. The inclusion of butter is something my Mom and I always have strong disagreements about, but it changes the fundamental texture and makes them not as crisp. I maintain that that’s okay because biscotti are dunkers–meant to be dunked in a cup of tea or coffee and not meant to shatter your teeth eating them plain.

Why you’ll love lemon pistachio biscotti particularly

1. So lovely: People, pistachios are beautiful. That vivid green tinged with purple is always worth looking at and set in a canvas of bright pale yellow biscotti then cut in a perfect cross-section, these cookies are lookers.
2. Sweet sour with richness of nuts: There’s a lot going on flavor-wise here. The lemon balances the light sweet flavor, and the nuts add some delicious fat that helps you forget that there’s no butter here.
3. Dairy-free: In the many years that I had a hard time tolerating dairy, biscotti were always a safe treat since they have no dairy ever in them. I’m not a gluten-free expert, but I imagine that it’s very easy to swap in your favorite GF flour without drama.

Tips for making good biscotti

1. Wet your hands: Biscotti dough is unique. It’s quite sticky, and that’s not a mistake. When you go to form the dough for the first baking, you might have a difficult time smoothing the dough into nice neat logs. First dampen your hands with a little water, and you’ll have no problem shaping the logs.
2. Sprinkle the tops with sugar: biscotti don’t usually need any extra decoration, though a sprinkle of sugar on the tops of the log will add just a little more texture and subtle contrast.
3. Don’t cut too soon: Treat your biscotti logs like you would bread by first letting it cool down before cutting. This will give you the cleanest cuts on your slices.
4. Keep your oven low: You do want to bake these at a high temperature as you’ll lose the paleness of the lemon dough and the vivid green of the pistachio. Stick to the lower temps in the recipe for the best looking biscotti.

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