Venetian treats at home! On our last day in Venice, We bought two kinds of traditional Venetian cookies -
Buranelli and
Zaletini at
Pasticceria Rosa Salva. The Rosa Salva's family business has been making traditional pasties since 1879!
Buranelli that we bought were in "doughnut" shape while there is a variety of "S" shape. It is said that
Buranelli were originally made by wives of fishermen in Burano, a Venice island so that fishermen could eat these nutrition-rich and long shelf-life cookies while they were far away from home for fishing. I checked the ingredients of Rosa Salva's and they were pretty simple - wheat flour, sugar, butter, egg yolk, vanilla, salt and lemon. They were delightful!
The other one,
Zaletini were also delicious as well. They were made with wheat flour, butter, corn flour, sugar, egg yolk, raisin, salt, vanilla and rum. The corn flour gave the cookies a pleasant crunchiness. The corn was clearly a key ingredients because “Zaleti” comes from the Venetian word for yellow! I don't know the history of the cookies, though. Actually I made Italian polenta cookies in diamond shape before that were very similar to
Zaletini, but they weren't as good as Rosa Salva's. I can't wait to find a good recipe of
Zaletini and bake some by myself!
