Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I'm in the process of making a chocolate-hazelnut biscotti recipe, and this is the one I'm using:http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/10/chocolate-hazelnut-biscotti-recipe.html.

I've actually never made biscotti before (this is a holiday treat for my brother, who loves them), but when I was prepping the ingredients it jumped out at me that the recipe has no salt in it. Ordinarily I would assume that it's a typo, except I happen to have that cookbook, and there's no salt in the recipe in the book either. So obviously the recipe as made by the Serious Eats staffer is accurate.

But I looked at at least a dozen biscotti recipes online and regardless of flavoring, they all have salt in them! So that got me wondering again. I guess I'll go ahead and make it as written, since I'm half-way through it already, but am curious if that would seem weird to anyone else...

Emilie

Maybe they expect that the nuts will have some salt? It does seem weird.

The biscotti recipe I use all the time has no salt...it has two types of nuts (un-salted), and it's never felt like it was missing anything.

Amy

My mom and I have an ongoing debate about salt in sweets/baked goods. She NEVER puts salt in any of her cookies, cakes, pies, etc. I put a little salt in almost everything just to give the flavor a little boost. I haven't taken the time to do side-by-side comparisons yet, so I don't know who's right on this one.

I tasted one a little while ago and it didn't seem to be lacking anything at all (and the nuts were unsalted). In fact it was really good. (Although I think I needed to bake them a little longer the second time -- they're crisp but definitely not as crunchy as typical.) The other biscotti recipes in that cookbook all call for kosher salt, so apparently it's intentional. Go figure!

Emilie

Go figure...

fwiw, traditionally Tuscan's don't put salt in their bread. An influence in some biscotti recipes perhaps?

Amy