Guido Pedrelli, the mastermind behind Nonna Box, has honed his culinary expertise for decades, inspired by family feasts in Emilia-Romagna. Mentored by his restaurateur nonna, he mastered Italian classics and furthered his skills with professional culinary studies in desserts and gelato making from Mec3. Today, he shares this rich legacy and authentic recipes through Nonna Box.
Expertise: Italian cuisine, Pasta, Pizza, Pastry, Dessert
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If you love snack cuisine, you are really going to love this Italian taralli recipe that makes small ring shaped dough crackers that Southern Italians absolutely adore and you will too. They taste great and are easy to make with just four easy-to-find ingredients that you probably already have in your cupboard.
The recipe I am sharing here is from the region of Puglia, sometimes called Apulia, which is in the heel of the boot of Italy. There are many other versions and recipes, but I like this one the best for its simplicity and delicious flavor. One of my favorite Italian sayings is: “Everything ends with tarallucci and wine.” This expression, born in taverns, is about heated arguments that then end in a friendly way with a glass of wine and some taralli crackers sort of similar to the English saying: “All’s well that ends well.”
Equipment
cookie sheet or baking sheet to bake the taralli
large mixing bowl or stand mixer with dough hook attachment (optional) to mix the dough
large pot to boil the taralli
skimmer or slotted spoon to remove the taralli
tea towel to place the taralli on
Ingredients
All-purpose flour (240 grams) – regular all purpose flour is perfect for this recipe, but you can also use harder flours like bread flour or even whole wheat flour if you prefer. If you use a different kind of flour you might need to add a little more liquid to the recipe to get the right texture for the baked taralli.
Fine sea salt (7 grams) – use fine sea salt in the dough and coarse salt for the water, as needed.
White wine (75 ml) – just a regular dry white wine for cooking works great. Some people use homemade wine or red wine, both of which will work, but be prepared that your taralli will be a darker color if you use red wine. You can substitute with water if you prefer that the taralli are alcohol-free.
Extra virgin olive oil (60 grams) – use a good quality extra virgin olive oil because the taste really comes through in this family recipe and olive oil is the essential ingredients for this baked taralli Italian snack.
How to make Italian taralli step by step
Make the taralli dough: Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer with dough hook if you are using this piece of equipment), then add the salt and stir. Then add the white wine and olive oil and knead by hand for several minutes until it forms a smooth and homogeneous dough. Form a dough ball with the taralli dough, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for an hour.
Boil water and form the taralli: Place a pot filled with water on the stove over medium heat. Add some coarse salt to the water. While the water is heating, form the taralli. First cut off a small piece of dough of about 15 grams. Roll the piece into a log of about 8 cm long and then shape it into a ring with the edges slightly overlapping and pinch together so the ring stays together. Place each taralli on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Repeat until you have used all the dough.
Boil the taralli: Now that the you have brought the water to a boil, drop 7-8 taralli into the pot of water and remove them with a skimmer as soon as they come to the surface. Place them immediately on a clean dish towel to dry.
Preheat oven and bake the taralli: Preheat the oven to 200 °C. Transfer all the boiled taralli to a drip pan or baking sheet covered with baking paper and bake them for 30 minutes. The taralli should be golden brown on the outside and dry on the inside. The chef can try one to make sure it is cooked through.
Cool down and serve: When they are cooked, turn off the oven, open the door halfway and let the taralli cool inside the oven on the baking sheets until they cool to room temperature. They are now ready to serve!
Expert tips
Don’t boil too long. Be sure to remove the taralli as soon as they float in the boiling water.
Let cool completely in the oven. Leave the taralli in the oven with the door open halfway until they are completely cooled, this will make them stay crunchier for longer.
Variations
Make a fun flavor like fennel taralli. You can add fennel seed, black pepper, olives or sun dried tomatoes chopped up into tiny pieces, or even some red pepper flakes/chilli flakes for a spicy Italian snack.
Whole wheat taralli. You can substitute the flour with whole wheat flour to make a whole wheat version. You might need to add a little more wine or some water so that the dough is soft enough.
Make it sweet. You can make a sweet version of taralli by adding some sugar to the dough and then also dipping the top in sugar before baking.
FAQ
How do you eat taralli?
Taralli is the quintessential snack of southern Italy, traditionally eaten plain and dunked in wine. However, there are also a lot of flavors that can be added – fennel, onion, garlic, sesame, cheese, chocolate, etc. It also pairs well with aperitifs, sherry, rosé and white wines.
Can you just bake them instead of boiling and baking?
Yes, if you use yeast when making the dough you can just bake the taralli. When the taralli do not have yeast they are usually boiled very quickly in hot water and then baked in the oven. When prepared using the second method they are sometimes called scaldatelle or scaldatelli.
How to store taralli
After the taralli are completely cooled, you can store them in an airtight container or a sealed plastic Ziploc bag for up to two weeks.
Where did the word “taralli” come from?
The origin of the word “Tarallo” is uncertain, indeed there is considerable disagreement about where it originated. Here are the top four hypothesis about where the name comes from:
from the Greek daratos, a kind of bread
from the Latin torrere, to toast
from the ancient French danal, round bread
from the Italian tar, which means wrapping
Taralli Pugliesi Recipe
These addictive and delicious ring shaped Italian crackers are the best snack with a glass of white wine and some sharp cheese or salami. We are sure you will love taralli as much as we do after trying this recipe from Puglia.
Sift the all purpose flour into a large mixing bowl, then add the salt and stir. Then add the white wine and olive oil and knead by hand for several minutes until it forms a smooth and homogeneous dough. If you are adding any additions to your taralli for flavoring, like red pepper flakes or fennel seeds, work them in now.
Form the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for an hour.
Place a pot filled with water on the stove over medium heat. Add some coarse salt to the water.
While the water is heating, form the taralli. First cut off a small piece of dough of about 15 grams. Roll the piece into a log of about 8 cm long and then shape it into a ring with the two edges slightly overlapping and then pinch together gently so that it keeps it shape. Place each taralli on a cookie sheet lined with baking paper. Repeat until you have used all the dough.
Now that the you have brought the water to a boil, drop 7-8 taralli into the pot of water and remove them with a skimmer or slotted spoon as soon as they come to the surface, this will just take a few seconds. Place them immediately on a clean tea towel to dry.
Preheat the oven to 200 °C.
Once all the taralli have been boiled, transfer them to a drip pan or cookie sheet covered with parchment paper and bake them in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. The taralli should be golden brown on the outside and dry on the inside. The chef can try one to make sure they are cooked through.
When they are cooked, turn off the oven, open the door halfway and let the taralli cool inside the oven until they cool to room temperature. They are now ready to serve!
A tarallo is a cracker which was originally salty in taste but now has sweeter variants as well. The basic ingredients are all-purpose flour, salt, olive oil and wine or water and sometimes yeast.
Tarallo is believed to have originated in both the Campania region, in the area of Naples, as well as the Puglia region. For the Apulian version, the legend tells of a mother who, having nothing to feed her children and having just a few simple ingredients in the pantry, made small circles of pasta by mixing flour, oil and a pinch of salt. In order to make them look more exciting, she closed them with a small final knot and cooked them in the oven.
The common story told in Naples is that at the end of the eighteenth century the Neapolitan bakers, not wanting to throw away the remains of leavened dough after having made bread, began to produce this cracker by adding lard and flavoring the dough with pepper. They worked the dough in two intertwined strips in a circle that was then knotted.
Because the majority of the ingredients would have gone to waste, and adding a little lard and pepper was not expensive, the biscuits quickly became popular with people who did not have much money to spend. Over time, they have been enriched with other ingredients and at the beginning of the 1900’s almond was added to the version from Naples.
In the nineteenth century, bakers began using the taralli dough to make different shapes and figures. These fanciful taralli were then used to decorate wedding banquet tables and were eaten at the end of the meal with a sweet wine.
The taralli are widespread in other regions of southern Italy and currently their variants are recognized as traditional Italian agri-food products in the following regions:
Puglia: taralli, black taralli with vincotto, taralli with sugar, taralli with chocolate, taralli with egg white, taralli with pizzaiola, taralli with fennel seeds, taralli with capocollo.
Campania: braided taralli, tarallini with wine, tarallo with almonds, tarallo with egg, tarallo of Agerola, tarallo suet and pepper, tarallucci al naspro, tarallo di DZ.
Calabria: white taralli, soft taralli, tarallini with anise seeds, tarallini with fennel seeds, tarallini with chilli flakes.
Basilicata: tarallini with fennel seeds, tarallini with sweet peppers, taralli with sugar, taralli with aviglianese sugar (much larger than usual).
Lazio: taralli.
Molise: taralli with fennel seeds.
Sicily: taralli.
Taralli were sold in taverns accompanied by a good glass of wine or in the streets in the popular food markets in Italy as a forerunner to modern day street food. A person selling taralli on the streets was called a “tarallaro.” The tarallaro would roam the city with a basket carried on his shoulders filled with taralli covered with a blanket. He would shout what he had on offer that day as the aroma of the warm taralli filled the air.
Guido Pedrelli, the mastermind behind Nonna Box, has honed his culinary expertise for decades, inspired by family feasts in Emilia-Romagna. Mentored by his restaurateur nonna, he mastered Italian classics and furthered his skills with professional culinary studies in desserts and gelato making from Mec3. Today, he shares this rich legacy and authentic recipes through Nonna Box.
