Oro Saiwa Home-Made or… Petit Beurre

petit beurre

Every time that my mother comes to Sweden to visit us, she brings a suitcase full of Italian delicacies. Food items difficult to find here, such as… the olive oil from my uncle’s olive trees orchard in Liguria… 36 months aged Parmesan cheese… huge pieces of prosciutto di Parma for my little carnivore daughter… fresh basil and thyme from her garden… and…

…and mom’s favorite biscuits: Oro Saiwa. A must on her breakfast table since I have known her (ca 40 years). This time my daughter got totally hooked on the biscuits, and on the second day she had already finished grandma’s weekly provision. Disaster. No Oro Saiwa here, how to fix breakfast?

No problem. This 40 something Italian hippy immediately looked up her bible (Google) for a home-made version of the biscuits -which actually are not Italian in origin but French- Petit Beurre, this is it. I was not aware of it before the quick search, but apparently the net is now populated by several beautiful renditions of these cookies, probably because Rizzoli released a petit beurre kit which gives close to perfection results.

petit beurre

Well, I did not have the super duper cutters, but I still managed to make some darn fragrant cookies using what I had -a ravioli cutter and a fork. And of course I also had to health-ify the recipe, adding whole-grain spelt flour to the dough. And my mother? At first she was slightly amused and not so excited about the home-made thingy. But after they came out of the oven she asked for the recipe. Little, big, satisfactions.

petit beurre

petit beurre

petit beurre

petit beurre

[gmc_recipe 5764]

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Barbara Elisi

Hi there! I am the "soul" behind Bread & Companatico. My main interest is the preservation of bread tradition and craft, with an eye to health. I hope you are having a good time reading this blog, and please don't be shy to connect with me through comments or emails and do keep on bread-ing! 🙂
72 replies
  1. Karen
    Karen says:

    Your post made me smile. I can just imagine your mother’s suit case. I used to do the same thing when I moved from home as there were things I couldn’t find at my new home across the country. Your petit beurre look great.

    Reply
  2. Susanne
    Susanne says:

    I am hippie 40-something, too :-); and I will bake them ….
    Here the petit beurre is namend “Leibniz”. Must be something….there seem to be petit beurre evereywhere….

    Reply
    • Barbara
      Barbara says:

      well, we are born after the 68 so we are bound to have some hippy blog in our veins 🙂 Leibniz, right! I guess these type of biscuits are very “old” and they must have been a favorite for long long time all across Europe…

      Reply
  3. Karin Anderson
    Karin Anderson says:

    I have to show this to my husband, he always pines for the petit beurres he got in Venice when he was a kid, and the little bakeries had not been taken over by mask shops (made in Taiwan.) I liked the German version, Leibniz Kekse, that Susanne mentions, but they must have changed the recipe, because they don’t quite taste the same.
    I will try these, my husband likes to dunk them in his coffee or tea, I want them crisp.

    Reply
    • Barbara
      Barbara says:

      they sound like good memories 🙂
      never had freshly baked petit beurre before, they are indeed really nice and buttery (and are already finished).
      I tasted the German version, they taste different compared to the Italian ones but the concept is the same.

      Reply
  4. wisla
    wisla says:

    I’m invititing your mom with Italian suitcase to Gdansk. This is on way to Sweden. In return I will fill her suitcase with Polish specialties 🙂

    Reply
    • Barbara
      Barbara says:

      you are too nice to me… cannot say that these are better than the store-bought, but they were really nice and buttery, perfect with my caffe’ latte!

      Reply
  5. Simona
    Simona says:

    I have a recipe that I make when I am out of biscotti (your mother is not the only one who needs her daily dose of them, though my favorite are not Oro Saiwa), but next time I will try yours as the result looks a lot better.

    Reply
    • Barbara
      Barbara says:

      and now I have to wonder which were your favorite… I made also abbracci once and they were pretty close to the original (you can find the post with my search button, the preview does not work for posts older than 1 year -when I moved the site- so they could not be among the related posts)

      Reply
  6. georgiagilmour
    georgiagilmour says:

    Thanks for the recipe, I appreciate the addition of the wholewheat and especially the low butter content! Cool =) In Russia we have Maria biscuits which are quite close to petit beurre. I have no idea why they’re called Maria but it’s somehow been fixed and various producers around here and in other cities offer their basic biscuits under this name.
    Haha, when I was going somewhere from Russia for a long time, I always took buckwheat groats with me and sometimes millet and cracked wheat =) and Granny’s jam if I could. Pity I couldn’t take kefir with me! 😉

    Reply
    • georgiagilmour
      georgiagilmour says:

      I’m in the process of making these biscuits (the dough is in the fridge now) and I forgot to add baking powder… hope they’ll turn out fine anyway. It was supposed to go in with the flour, right?

      Reply
        • georgiagilmour
          georgiagilmour says:

          I’ve just finished baking them! I used wholewheat and all-purpose flour instead of spelt, so my cookies are of a lighter colour. They somehow got burnt even before 10 minutes, not awfully, just partially. When I got them out of the oven, they smelt just like those Maria biscuits! I will try them tomorrow =)

          Reply
    • Barbara
      Barbara says:

      Georgia, you are precious! thank you for involving me in the process, it is so fun to receive updates on one of the recipes I posted. I will update the recipe with a larger range for the baking (8-12 minutes) and the warning to have an eye on the biscuits. much depends on the oven, so there can variations, important is to know it and look after the biscuits at least the first time. you may want to reduce the amount of sugar next time, I guess they would turn out ok anyway… and they call them Maria even here in Sweden! must be a Baltic thing 🙂

      Reply
      • georgiagilmour
        georgiagilmour says:

        My pleasure! I left at my parents’ place a whole bag of these addictive Maria things on Sunday, sure there’s nothing left already =) The first batch took about 10 minutes and the second just under 8. But all cookies are great, the crunchier and the puffier ones, both. Yum!

        Reply
        • Barbara
          Barbara says:

          I wish I could be so strong to give them away… I actually ate most of them, and in less than two days. I have a weakness for buttery and crunchy biscuits. ciao!!

          Reply
  7. Wolfram
    Wolfram says:

    thank you very much, what a beautiful biscuit. cd I ask: where did you get the cookie cutter wheel? and cd you perhaps send me the recipe. wd love to try making. rolling it out so thinly might be a challenge. thanks a lot in advance. thank you for your intersting blog. bw wolfram

    Reply
    • Barbara Elisi
      Barbara Elisi says:

      hi Wolfram sorry for a very delayed answer. No cookie cutter, I just used a wheel ravioli cutter, free hand.
      Recipe coming back soon…

      Reply
  8. Marialena
    Marialena says:

    Hi Barbara! I ve been trying to get the recipe but for some reason it doesn’t appear at all on my screen. I can see the pictures and all the comments but the actual recipe is nowhere to be found 🙁 can u please help? I ve stopped buying ready made pert heiress long ago and when we saw your pictures I promised my kids I d be doing these for them and they ve gone wild with anticipation 😆 Looking forward to you reply! Thank u!!!!

    Reply
    • Barbara Elisi
      Barbara Elisi says:

      Hi Maria Lena! Unfortunately a few recipes have been lost in the transcription to the new web domain, sad to notice this is one of them. I will update the post in the future. For now I can only suggest you to google for other recipes. And good luck with the baking!

      Reply
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