This recipe is an inheritance from a man for whom food was a way of life. He grew up in the restaurant business in St. Louis, He gave the same gift to his family he was given - a belief in the joys of herbs and spices, honest ingredients, gas flames, and time to let the fire work its ways.
You concentrate on what your taste buds have to tell you. You wait for the little flavors to appear below and behind the dominant ones. You hold onto the aromas until they almost disappear. You smell to learn the way they change. You do it again and again.
About a dozen years ago I began thinking about the biscotti I wanted to create. A desire to make a citrus biscotti started the thinking process that led down the road to what would become the Bob’s Biscotti trio. It was a longer road than I expected. They often are.
After the battles I had creating The Citrus and My Hazelnut, I should have been wary about what would happen with the third of the three biscotti I envisioned. I wasn’t. I can’t say with any certainty why I wasn’t, but I suspect it was the focus I had on what was becoming my “family” of cookies.
I was introduced to baking before the age of two. Our family of four was living in a tiny apartment above the country club my father had been brought in to manage in Kansas City not long after the Second World War.
Brioche is not the bread I’d start with, but I am ever so happy to have gotten to the point of regularly making it. It is demanding and magical. It is rewarding even as you are learning.
