On 11 November, the day dedicated to San Martino di Tours, it is Sicilian custom to eat San Martino biscuits, very dry and hard biscuits flavored with fennel or anise seeds. It is a very ancient custom, linked to the rites of the wine farmers, who on the occasion of the so-called Summer of San Martino saw the new wine ripen, an important source of their economy. Reciting the proverb "In San Martino every must is wine", the men would open the barrels and run to taste the new wine, hoping that it was of good quality. The women then arrived with the recently baked San Martino biscuits and everyone took one and dipped it in new wine, muscat or some other sweet liqueur wine kept at home for the occasions, in an atmosphere of hope and positivity impregnated. the intense perfume of anise and wine.

Ingredients

500 g of flour 00
+150 g of granulated sugar
+100 g of lard
+30 g of brewer's yeast
+20 g of aniseed

• A pinch of salt
• Water q.s.

Work the flour with the brewer's yeast dissolved in warm water and then mix with the sugar, lard, salt and aniseed.

Add water until you get a dough with the consistency of bread dough. Cut the dough into pieces long enough to create shapes of an ascending spiral type of about 3 cm in diameter and place the shapes well spaced on a baking sheet covered with baking paper. Let them rise for at least two hours.

After this time, place the pan in a preheated oven at 200 ° C. After 10 minutes, take the biscuits out of the oven for two minutes, bring the oven temperature to 160 ° C and bake them again for 20 minutes, making sure they do not turn brown. At the end of cooking, let the San Martino biscuits cool in the off oven so that they can be knitted well.