Brigidini di Lamporecchio

The name comes from the Brigidine nuns, the order of Saint Bridget of Sweden, who kept a convent in the hills near Pistoia. Tradition holds that in the mid-sixteenth century the sisters, who baked the unleavened cialde for Communion, enriched the same host batter with egg, sugar and anise and so made the first brigidini. From the convent the craft passed to the town of Lamporecchio, whose travelling vendors, the brigidinai, carried the wafers in zinc baskets to fairs and sagre across Tuscany and beyond. They are still pressed on decorated irons much like those once used for the hosts, and today the brigidino di Lamporecchio is a recognised Prodotto Agroalimentare Tradizionale of Tuscany.

A brigidino snaps at the first bite into brittle shards, then dissolves almost at once. It is lightly sweet, with the clean liquorice-fennel warmth of anise running through it and a faint toasted note from the iron. Thin and dry, it leaves no weight on the tongue, so one wafer follows another.

The wafer's glassy crispness is made by heat and sugar. Pressed thin between irons at around 160°C, the batter loses almost all its water in seconds, so it sets rigid rather than staying cakey. The sugar melts and, with the egg proteins, browns through the Maillard reaction to the pale gold colour and toasted smell; then, as the wafer cools below the sugar's glass transition, it hardens to a brittle, shatter-clean sheet. The curl appears in cooling too, as the thin sheet dries and contracts unevenly and warps. Anise carries its scent in anethole, a volatile aromatic oil released by the heat of the irons. Because the finished wafer is dry and its sugar draws in damp air, it is kept in sealed bags to stay crisp.