Thanks to a good friend, who makes me taste these delicious traditional Sicilian biscuits, I decided they were so good to be worth trying to prepare them at home! As usual, I searched a good recipe on the Web, but not satisfied I created my own lighter and healthier recipe, which turned out excellent!! So I thought it would have been nice to share it with all of you.
Biscotti Regina (Pastamadre's recipe):
200 gr durum wheat flour
100 gr whole spelt flour
50 gr virgin olive oil
70 gr sugar
100 ml milk (for a vegan version you can replace milk with plant milks or even with water)
a pinch of salt
vanilla
10 gr baker's ammonia
sesame for the coating
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl in order to obtain a soft and sticky pastry. (Adjust milk ratio if the pastry is too hard or flour ratio if it's extremely sticky) Shape the pastry into a rope by rolling it back and forth between your hands until it's thin as a thumb. Then cut it in small pieces (4 or 5 cm) and coat with sesame. Bake for 25 minutes circa at 200 degrees Celsius!!
Store the cooled Biscotti Regina up to several weeks in a cookies tin.
N.B. Because the baking ammonia, which degrades to gaseous ammonia and carbon dioxide upon heating, the biscuits will smell strongly ammonia during the baking but don't worry, the smell will completely vanish as soon they cool down.