Chef Frank makes Anisette Toast

I'm chef Frank this is Proto cooks and today we're making Anna's at toast [Music] the toast is one of those things that brings me back to my childhood uh whenever we visit my grandmother or my grandfather or Nanny and pop on my dad's side the Italian side I always remember my grandfather eating andazette toast with his coffee dunking it in and slurping it uh he did not make it my grandmother did not make it they bought it it was from a company called stelladoro and I know I don't know if it's just an East Coast thing but stelladoro makes like Italian cookies I'll put a little picture of it somewhere on the screen so that you can see what it looks like and what got me on the path to making my own anazette toast was watching a video by a fellow Creator named Beth on my puppy's kitchen it's Beth from Epicurious I do videos with her on Epicurious and she put her version up like months and months ago and you should check it out I'll put a link to it around here uh she's spectacular check her Channel out uh but I wanted to show you my version of this this Anna zet toast is what I consider a very very Italian flavor Anis or anazette I did a video with my cousin Steven again I'll post it up here called charmella which is a which is a bread from Frozen Italy that has aniseed in it so it's a very Italian flavor and it's not necessarily for everyone it's basically Licorice and not Everyone likes black licorice I love it and you'll see a lot of flavors like that in Italy like Campari something that's bitter or something that's sweet and bittered so give it a try if you don't like black licorice you might not like it but I think it's wonderful especially with a cup of coffee anesthetos is basically a biscotti which is just an Italian cookie that's cooked twice you bake it in a loaf you slice it then you bake it again so it gets a little crunchy with this version or my version of it I don't make it super crunchy I want it to be a little soft and not as like firm and dense for my anesthetosis this is what you're going to need butter flour sugar eggs ground up aniseed salt baking powder baking soda and anise extract before we start cooking I want to talk about some of the ingredients aniseed this is not fennel seed this is aniseed they're really small fennel's a lot bigger I think fennel packs a little less punch get yourself some antacid it's not that expensive right and what I did with this is I just ground it up I got some of my aniseed I have a coffee grinder I grind it up until it's a powder and that's what I use in this just as a quick side note I have a coffee grinder that I use for just grinding spices the other ingredient is Anise extract whatever Brands you prefer this one's pretty good I tried to make my own anise extract it's not as strong this has a little more oomph to it a little more power so I bought some Manus extract first thing I want to do is mix my dry ingredients together in a bowl so I get my flour I have my baking powder baking soda and salt Salt's always important remember that salt is a flavor enhancer if you don't add salt it's going to be Bland and then my ground up anise seed right and then what I do is I just whisk this together so that I don't get any like pockets of baking powder and baking soda I whisk it together I love that smell the anise smell just gets me every time so let's set this aside and then we'll deal with the wet ingredients now we're going to deal with the wet ingredients and we're going to cream them together this is a basic cookie believe it or not and we're using the creaming method which means we're going to take our butter it's softened and I'm going to put it into the mixer with a paddle I'm going to add my sugar to that and we're going to cream this together it's got to be a little light and fluffy don't start at too high a speed just go slow and start gradually ramping it up all right what I like to do here is just scrape my sides down make sure that I'm getting everything in there it might not get super creamy it'll get creamy once the eggs go in so let's Let It Go another like minute all right those are combined well what I'm going to do now is I'm going to crack my eggs into a bowl I try and crack them into a bowl just because I don't want any shells in this whenever I see someone crack their egg on the side there's always a chance of of uh getting shell in there and I don't want that I'm also going to add my anise extract to my eggs right I'm doing a fair amount because I want this to be nice and flavorful and as extracts in now I'm going to turn this back on and I'm going to add one egg at a time once that egg is incorporated add another one and uh that's how we go with it once I add my eggs I'm going to scrape down my sides because butter and sugar likes to stick to the sides in the bottom and I don't want it to be lumps I want it to be incorporated fully so just scrape your bottom scrape your sides go back in all right it's time to add the flour and I'm gonna add everything all at once now there are some people that say add a little flour here a little flower there I add it all at once there's a fair amount of fat in this and sugar so I'm not they're not going to get tough so I like to add all my flour and at once uh try not to get it everywhere I usually do and we're going to mix this until it forms a dough again don't turn your machine on full blast because then you'll get it everywhere one last time I'm going to scrape it down get all that excess flour off the sides and that's it we're done we can put it on the pan and bake it let me clear the mixer away and I'll show you how to do that so the dough is done my oven is preheated at 350. I have a sheet tray with some parchment paper if you don't have parchment paper just put a little bit of Grease or um you know like shortening on the on the tray now my dough is done so I'm gonna just scrape it off the paddle get as much as you can offer there right put that aside and then uh we can get this out onto the tray now what I try and do is form it all together at this point get it onto my tray in one big lump I'm not too worried about the shape at this second but I will be worried about it once I get all the dough out now what I like to do with this is form it with my hands and in order to do that not sticking I get a little bit of water on my hands I have a little thing of water I get my hands a little bit wet and now I'm going to form it into a long skinny log right so it's about two inches wide about an inch tall maybe half an inch tall but I want I don't want it to be too wide because it will spread so I I usually try and go on the thinner side for this because I don't want these to be huge so what I'll do is I'll just get the water on my hands and spread it and try and make it as even as possible and then I can go into the oven for the first bait because remember we're baking these twice so first bake is done you can see it's hot that it's kind of spread out it's nice and even and when I press on it it kind of bounces back a little it's not soft and Squishy it took about 25 minutes to get to this point so what we're going to do now is wait about five minutes I'm Gonna Save My tray take this off the tray and slice it and then put it back in the oven to toast so this is rested for about five minutes what I'm gonna do I'm gonna move it over leave my tray there get my spatula and get this off actually you know what I'll do I'll just carry it over I don't want it to crack I want it to be in a whole piece parchment goes back onto my tray and what I'm going to do now is slice right you want it to still be a little warm you don't want it to be cold but if it's super hot it's going to crumble and Shred so get yourself a nice serrated knife and saw right we're not chopping we're using this like a saw get it now I'm going to move this over get my tray back here and I'm going to line these up line it up [Music] so back into the oven about five minutes I'm going to turn them over five more minutes until they're dry I want to take a second here and talk about uh the mistake I made when I started to cut into the loaf of the cookies I noticed that the center was a little under baked now in the end I knew it was going to be okay it was going to be good to eat but it wasn't perfect and a lot of times when we make videos you want things to be perfect but I wanted to highlight the fact that sometimes things aren't perfect but you can eat it it's not as beautiful as you want it to be but it's still going to be really tasty and at the end of the day I'm an impatient cook I'm not a patient Baker so that's why sometimes when I bake things aren't going to be perfect all right they're done don't they look good don't they smell delicious I wish you could smell this my dad always used to say I wish we had smell-o-vision but we don't um so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to leave them on the tray until they'll cool completely I don't put them on a rack I still want them to toast a little so if you leave them on the tray they'll get nice and toasty now it's my favorite time time to taste I made myself a little pot of coffee and I know my grandfather used to drink his coffee with milk and sugar so that's what I'm gonna do actually that's how I take it too a little bit of milk a little bit of sugar actually I'm using cream right so like I said these go so well with coffee I'm going to give it a taste first without the coffee and then give it a taste with it okay so um it's crunchy on the outside just a little tender in the middle and that's how I like it I don't want them to be like shatteringly crisp crisp on the outside soft in the center let's get a little cup of coffee and dip it in give it a slurp like my poppy is doing always a slurp oh my gosh it goes so well with coffee these flavors bring me back it makes me think of family and time with my grandparents and I always find that if food can transport you back to those times it makes it that much better I hope you enjoyed this video if you did give us a thumbs up like And subscribe we have merch in the description down below merch uh we have a P.O box down there as well I want to thank my patreon patrons for sticking with us and supporting us thank you so much and that's my anazette toast I'm chef Frank this is Proto Cooks have a good one okay [Music]

Channel: ProtoCooks with Chef Frank

Views: 6,096

Keywords: #cookies, #italiancookies, #anise, #anisette, #anisettetoast, #stelladoro, #cookiesandcoffee, #aniseseed, #baking, #foodmemeories

Id: oJefM_Jjj-o

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023