Biscotti began as survival food. The name comes from the medieval Latin biscoctus, meaning twice cooked, and the second bake pulled out nearly all moisture so the bread would not mold. Roman soldiers, medieval sailors, crusaders, and monks relied on it for long journeys and winters. The English word biscuit shares the root, yet today’s biscuits are baked once, and in modern Italian biscotti simply means almost any cookie.

The almond biscuit known today was defined in the mid 1800s by pastry chef Antonio Mattei in Prato, Tuscany, with no butter, oil, milk, or yeast: just flour, sugar, eggs, pine nuts, and raw unskinned almonds. He won a special mention at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris. A sign on his shop advertising cantuccini, a word locals used for softer imitations, led the public to attach that name to his famous biscuits. In Catalonia, crushed versions of the biscuit thicken savory dishes, and modern coffee shop biscotti with baking powder and chocolate coatings break most of Mattei’s rules.

• The dough log is sliced on a diagonal while still warm, because once cooled the fat free slab would shatter.
• In Tuscany the biscuits are an after dinner dessert dunked in Vin Santo, which the dry starch soaks up without collapsing.
• Catalan versions include carquinyolis, while Valencia and Menorca have their own shapes and names.
• In the Baix Llobregat area, crushed biscuits go into sauces for duck stuffed with turnips and for rabbit with snails.
• In Vic, Carcanyoli is also a festival character, and in Vilanova i la Geltrú the biscuits decorate Palm Sunday palms.