Torrone di Bagnara

Before you start

The sugar for this torrone is cooked to about 170 °C, far hotter than boiling water, and it sticks to the skin. Keep children and pets out of the kitchen, wear long sleeves and closed shoes, cook on a back burner with the pan's handle turned in, and keep a bowl of cold water by the stove, to plunge a splashed hand into at once.

1. 1Line the tin and set everything out

   Start
   Hands-on 5 min

   Line the loaf tin with baking paper, base and sides, or lay a sheet of baking paper on a board. Put two plates in the fridge for the tests, and set out the spices, the palette knife and a small bowl of water, the oven gloves, the knife and the ruler, so that they are at hand when the sugar is ready.

   Check Everything you need after the cooking is within reach of the stove, the pan sits on a back burner and its handle is turned away from the edge.

   Tip Our guide: there is no butter or oil on the specification's list, and baking paper lets the set sugar go without them.

   Tip Burns: if hot sugar touches your skin, plunge it at once into the bowl of cold water, then hold it under cool running water for 20 minutes. Do not pull off sugar stuck to the skin. A large or deep burn needs medical help.

The torrone

From the moment the sugar is brown to the cutting, work without stopping: the mass sets as it cools.

1. 2Cook the sugar, honey and almonds until brown

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   Hands-on 15–25 minHeat mediumOfficial text

   Put the sugar mass and the unpeeled almonds into the pan and mix them. Cook the mixture over direct heat, at an initial temperature of 160 °C–200 °C, for as long as it takes, stirring, for it to reach the brown colour called ‘manto di monaco’.

   Check All the sugar has melted and coats the almonds in a glossy, even brown, about the colour of the ground cinnamon you have set out. An almond lifted out with the spoon onto a cold plate, left a minute to cool and then cut in half is pale gold to light brown inside, not white.

   Tip Our guide: put the sugar, the honey and the raw almonds in the heavy pan together, over medium heat, and stir all the time with the long wooden spoon, scraping the bottom. By our estimate it takes 15–25 minutes; the colour decides.

   Tip Our guide: the specification does not say whether its 160 °C–200 °C is the heat of its kettle or of the mass. At home, medium heat; the colour decides, and the next step's checks.

   Tip Our guide: at first the sugar turns sandy and clings to the almonds in white grains. Keep stirring: it melts again, then browns.

   Tip Never touch or taste the hot sugar, and never add water to it: it spits.

2. 3Cook it slowly to the glassy break

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   Hands-on 3–5 minTemp 170 °CHeat lowOfficial text

   Go on cooking slowly, until the sugar mass, at room temperature, is glassy and breaks when pressed: the ‘rottura vitrea’, the glassy break.

   Check Off the heat, a little of the syrup (no almond) dropped from the teaspoon onto a cold plate and left about a minute to cool breaks cleanly, like glass, when pressed with the back of the spoon: it does not bend or stretch. As a guide, a probe thermometer reads about 170 °C with the pan tilted so that the syrup pools round its tip; the drop test decides.

   Tip Our guide: turn the heat to low and keep stirring for a few more minutes. Lift the pan off the heat while each test drop cools, so that it does not go too far.

   Tip Wear oven gloves whenever you lift or tilt the hot pan, for the probe or for a test drop.

   Tip If the drop bends or sticks, give it another minute on low heat and test again. Stop before it turns a dark reddish brown and smokes: past its colour it turns bitter.

   Tip Test with the spoon and a cold plate, never with your fingers.

   Tip The specification allows a little egg white at this stage; this page leaves it out.

3. 4Stir in the spices

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   Hands-on 1 minOfficial text

   Then add the ground cinnamon and cloves, and mix until the mixture is even.

   Check No streaks of spice are left on the surface and the almonds are spread right through the mass.

   Tip Our guide: off the heat, so that the spices do not scorch.

Shaping and cutting

1. 5Pour it into the mould

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   Hands-on 3 minOfficial text

   Pour the mixture into the mould.

   Check An even slab, about 2 cm thick, with the almonds right out to the edges and straight sides.

   Tip Our guide: wearing oven gloves, lift the pan and tip the whole mass into the lined tin, then press it level with the palette knife dipped in water and shaken dry, or with the cut face of the half lemon on its fork. Without the tin, shape it on the baking paper into a block about 18 cm by 10 cm, pushing the sides in with the palette knife.

   Tip The specification allows any height from 1.5 cm to 2.5 cm; aim for about 2 cm.

2. 6Let it firm until it can be handled

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   Rest 5–10 minOfficial text

   Leave it to cool until it can be handled.

   Check The slab keeps its shape when you press its edge with the palette knife, but is still warm, and a heavy knife pressed straight down would still go through it.

   Tip Our guide: about 5–10 minutes for a slab this thick, by our estimate. Do not wait until it is cold: a sugar glass shatters under the knife instead of cutting.

3. 7Cut it into bars

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   Hands-on 5 minOfficial text

   Cut it by hand with a knife into pieces 4 cm–12 cm long, 1.5 cm–2.5 cm wide and 1.5 cm–2.5 cm high.

   Check Twenty bars of about 4.5 cm by 2 cm by 2 cm, cleanly cut, brown inside with almonds right through.

   Tip Our guide: lift the slab out by its paper onto the board. Cut it along its length into 5 strips 2 cm wide, then each strip into 4 bars of 4.5 cm, pressing the knife straight down rather than sawing.

   Tip Our guide: by our estimate each bar weighs about 22 g now and about 25 g once coated, within the specification's 14 g–35 g.

4. 8Leave the bars to cool

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   Rest 30 min

   Spread the bars out on the paper, apart from each other, and leave them until completely cold. Make the syrup in the last 10 minutes.

   Check Cold underneath as well, and hard: a bar no longer gives at all when pressed.

   Tip Kept apart, they cannot stick back together as they set.

   Tip Meanwhile, once the empty pan is cool to the touch, fill it with warm water and leave it to soak: the set sugar dissolves.

The coating

1. 9Cook the syrup

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   Hands-on 5–8 minTemp 115 °CHeat mediumOfficial text

   Dissolve the sugar for the glaze in the water, then cook it at 110 °C–118 °C until it becomes a sugar syrup.

   Check The sugar has fully dissolved and the syrup is clear. With the pan tilted so that the syrup pools round its tip, a probe thermometer reads about 115 °C; without one, a few drops in a glass of cold water gather into a soft ball you can squeeze.

   Tip Our guide: in the small, deep saucepan, stir the sugar and water over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved, then stop stirring and let it boil to about 115 °C, the middle of the specification's range.

   Tip Our guide: take it off the heat as soon as it is ready and dip at once; left on the heat, it goes on thickening past the specification's 118 °C. If it grows too thick to drip from a bar, stir in a teaspoon of hot water off the heat, standing back as it spits, and bring it back to 110 °C–118 °C.

2. 10Dip the bars and roll them in sugar

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   Hands-on 15 minOfficial text

   Dip the torroni in the syrup and drain them so that the excess runs off; at once, while still hot, roll them in the sugar, so that no lumps form as they cool.

   Check Every side of each bar is covered with a thin crust of sugar grains, the brown torrone just showing through, with no lumps of sugar stuck to it.

   Tip Our guide: put the sugar for rolling in the shallow dish. Tilt the saucepan so that the syrup pools on one side; with one fork, lower a bar into it, turning it so that every face is coated, lift it and let it drip for a few seconds, then drop it into the sugar and roll it with the second fork. Shake off the loose sugar and set it on the rack. One bar at a time.

   Tip Keep one fork for the syrup and one for the sugar: grains of sugar carried into the syrup make it grainy.

3. 11Leave them to dry

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   Rest 1 hOfficial text

   Leave them simply to dry at room temperature.

   Check The coating is dry to the touch, no longer sticky, and firm.

   Tip Our guide: about an hour, by our estimate, in a dry room. Handle them as little as you can: each touch takes off some of the sugar.

4. 12Wrap them

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   Hands-on 10 minOfficial text

   Wrap them within 4 hours of cooling, without handling them in between, so that they keep their sugar coating.

   Check Each bar wrapped on its own, closed all round, and the tin shut tight.

   Tip Our guide: wrap each bar in cellophane or baking paper, twisting or folding the ends, and keep them in an airtight tin in a cool, dry place.

5. 13Serve

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   Hands-on 2 min

   Unwrap the bars and serve them at the end of the meal, with a glass of passito made from Zibibbo grapes of the Costa Viola.

   Check A bite breaks cleanly, crunchy and crumbly rather than chewy, with a taste of toasted almonds and burnt sugar and a light spiced finish.