Italian Cornetti

While browsing through my phone flipbook, I found a picture for Italian cornetti, a crescent shaped pastry that is often enjoyed for breakfast with a cup of cappuccino. Though I've never had the opportunity to try this popular breakfast, it sounded enticing enough for me to try to make it at home. It was actually difficult to find a recipe for cornetti except for this one below. We shall see the results!

Italian Cornetti

Recipe from marialiberti.com

Cooking time: 2 hours 30 minutes

Yield: 16 cornetti

Ingredients

3 cups flour 

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp honey

4 tbsp sunflower seed oil

1 cake yeast or 1 packet active dry yeast

1 cup tepid milk (110-115 degrees F)

3 eggs

pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

Brush on topping: 

2 egg yolks

2 tsp sugar

pinch of milk

Directions

1. Activate the yeast in tepid (110-110 degrees) milk and let stand for about 10 minutes. Pour the flour into a large bowl and make a well in the center. Pour the yeast and milk mixture, and the remaining ingredients for the cornetti, through the vanilla. Mix the dough with a wooden spoon until the dough is smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and proof for about 1 hour.
2. Lightly dust your counter. Transfer the dough onto the counter and roll out into a large circle. Cut the circle in half, then quarters, etc until you have 16 even triangles. Scoop a tablespoon of honey or marmalade in the top center of each triangle. Let the triangles proof for another 40 minutes with the honey on top. 
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
4. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks, 2 tsp sugar, and a pinch of milk. Set aside. 
5. Roll the triangles into the shape of a cornetti. Place on a lined baking sheet and brush the tops with the egg yolk mixture. Bake the cornetti for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm.

Nutritional Analysis:
per serving: 171 calories, 4.9g fat (2.6g saturated, 0.4g polyunsaturated, 1.5g monounsaturated),  26.8g carbohydrates, 0.7g fiber, 0.1g protein

**Helpful tips and common mistakes

When the recipe is referring to melting the yeast in the milk, it is simply instructing you to activate the yeast. Cake yeast is referring to fresh yeast so if you choose to use cake yeast, the temperature of the milk should be between 70-80 degrees F.

Butter was used instead of sunflower seed oil; however, if you choose to do the same, keep in mind that butter burns easier.

When rolling out the dough, make sure to dust the your counter with plenty of flour. Flour prevents the dough from sticking to your counter and will make it easier for you when it is time to place it on the baking sheets. Since the recipe didn't have the dimensions of how large the circle should be, I rolled out the dough to about 1/4 inch thickness.

Using a bench knife, I cut the circle into quarters and each quarter into 4 pieces. 1/2 tbsp of honey was poured onto the top wider end of the triangles and proofed once more. 

When it is time to roll the triangles, lay them with the seam side down on the baking sheet. 

Since I substituted butter for the sunflower seed oil, the cornetti were done baking in 15 minutes. Keep an eye on your cornetti as they may be finished earlier than expected.

The cornetti had a slightly sweet honey taste and was a lovely bread. However, if you visited Italy and were looking to replicate the cornetti you had for breakfast there, this is not the right recipe. After doing more research, the authentic cornetti is actually more like a puff pastry, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. These were more like a bread, a tasty bread nonetheless, but still a bread. It is on the denser side and apparently, more like the cornetti that pizza makers and bakers would bake instead of what pastry chefs would prepare. Perhaps not what I had expected but you live and you learn, right?