Almond Biscotti, or How I Learned My Lesson

I don't know if there is a written set of kitchen laws, but if there were, I imagine one of them would be "follow directions." I did not follow that code when I made Almond Biscotti recently. I added all the correct ingredients in their proper order, but then came the instruction "divide dough in half" to form two loaves. But, there did not seem to be a lot of dough to go around, and I did not want little measly biscotti, I wanted biscotti of substance. So, I disregarded the recipe creator's instruction and made one loaf.

Well, while in the oven, the dough spread just a little and when I took it out to slice it and bake it again, the loaf was a little doughy. So doughy that clumps of the mixture stuck to my knife. I returned it to the oven to bake a little longer. It was still doughy, but I wanted biscotti now, not later. So, I sliced the loaf and baked, and baked some more, and some more. They ended up edible, but not as crunchy as I had hoped, and a little too big. Imagine that.

Take aways:

• Follow the directions for at least the first attempt at any recipe.
• Do not drown the top of the biscotti with sugar. Biscotti is supposed to taste like almonds, not sugar cubes.
• Add a little more flour next time; the dough was quite sticky.
• Follow directions. I am not smarter than the creator of the recipe. At least not yet.