Families in Italy often substitute pepper rings, a sort of biscuit, for bread. Although they are great all year round, in our family they are often eaten at Easter. If heated before serving, they have an even better flavor. Try serving them with espresso or black coffee.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 20 mins |
| Total Time: | 40 mins |
| Servings: | 12 |
| Yield: | 12 rings |
Ingredients
- 12 eggs
- ½ cup butter, melted
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- 6 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper
- 3 tablespoons baking powder
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water to boil over medium-high heat. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
- In a large bowl, beat eggs. Stir in melted butter and oil. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, salt, pepper and baking powder.
- Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in the egg mixture. Mix until dough pulls together. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly. Divide dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into an 8 inch long cylinder. Bend each cylinder into a ring shape and pinch ends together. With a sharp knife, score each ring around its outside edge.
- Drop rings two at a time into boiling water and boil for 1 minute. Remove rings from water and place on lightly greased cookie sheets.
- Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes, until golden brown.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 432 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 50 g |
| Cholesterol | 232 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 13 g |
| Saturated Fat | 7 g |
| Sodium | 951 mg |
| Sugars | 1 g |
| Fat | 20 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Tasty. I ended up using about 8 cups of flour.. another 1 .5 cups before kneading and then about another .5 cups when rolling out the strips. I topped with more coarse salt and pepper. I liked the texture of the outside..The inside is very much like a biscuit. I was expecting a different texture, but it’s good. I liked this dipped in seasoned olive oil. I made 22 of these instead of 12.. they came out about the size of a bagel. Bake about 22 minutes @450
The good news is that these taste pretty darned good, for a fairly simple biscuit. Slightly eggy, nice and peppery, big and fairly dense. They definitely taste better warmed, though I didn’t try them with the suggested coffee or espresso. The slightly bad news (which a previous reviewer ran into) is that they are kind of difficult for inexperienced bakers to make. I consider myself a low-intermediate baker by now, but I’ve never made anything like this. I was pretty sure I measured 6 cups of flour, and not 5, and the dough was quite wet and sticky. I slightly panicked and tossed in another cup or so, and tried to continue. The dough was still fairly sticky, such that I didn’t think it possible or worthwhile to do the “scoring the perimeter” step, so I skipped that. I baked the first half-dozen for 20 minutes; then I added another half-cup of flour or so to the remaining dough, and baked the second half-dozen for 22 minutes. The second batch turned out better, being slightly browned on top. Lastly, I guess I was expecting these to look somewhat like bagels, if not pretzels, but the outside texture was slightly bumpy and irregular. As I said, these did taste pretty good, but the recipe threw me some curves along the way. I just hope the results I got were close enough to what I was supposed to get.
The dough came out so wet and gooey that you could not form anything. I even tried to add more flour to make the dough more durable and nothing worked.
Excellent makes a great substitute for bread. An Italian bagel.