The Buccellato is a sweet toasted bread with a traditional donut shape, but can also be found with a loaf shape. It’s a typical product of Lucca tradition, as demonstrated by the said “Who comes in Lucca and doesn’t eat the buccellato, is as he doesn’t had been there” .
The ancient origins can guess from its name: the term “buccellato” comes from the Latin “Bucella” indicating a kind of biscuit, cracker or sandwich common among the poorer classes and distributed as rations to soldiers in times past. Testimonials of his very remote origins are found in a document of 1485 that is about the process to a woman who killed her husband with a poisoned buccellato, and can be found also in the documents about the taxes on the sales of buccellato, applied by the Republic of Lucca in 1578.
To produce the buccellato takes just a few simple ingredients: flour, water, sugar, anise seeds, yeast, raisins, (in some recipes is also added butter, milk and egg). The secret lies in knowing how to mix it in the right doses.
It’s a dessert that can be eaten fresh or “put down”; goes with wine, vin santo, cream and coffee, cheese and rum.
The Buccellato can be therefore a great dessert for your Christmas lunch, but do not forget to add the Nuts, which by tradition are joined into the dough togheter with raisins on holidays.
What is necessary:
500 gr of flour
125 grams of sugar
20 g of yeast of beer
a tablespoon of anise seeds
125g raisins (sultanina)
2 eggs
2 glasses of milk
50 g of sugar and egg white to buff the surface
nuts, proportionally, on holidays
how do you make:
In a small bowl, put 100 g. of flour and pour the yeast undone in a glass of warm milk. Mix and then cover and let rise.
On the work table put the rest of the flour and add the anise seeds, two beaten eggs and raisins soaked in warm water. With the help of the rest of the warm milk make a soft dough, to which then we add the rest of the dough kept aside.
Mix well and leave rise until the dough has doubled in volume.
Take the dough and knead donut-shaped or loaf-shaped (bearing in mind that the mass will double in volume), and let rise again. Brush the surface of buccellato with slightly beaten egg white and sugar syrup (50 g. Of water and 50 g. Of sugar dissolved in the fire). Arrange buccellato in a greased and floured mold and bake in oven at 180°C for about 45 minutes.
