The Taste Tests
Every box is bought at retail under a customer’s name and tasted blind. The method publishes before any verdict, so you can hold us to it.
The mail-order test
60 bakeries in the Register ship biscotti nationally. We are ordering from all of them — at retail, under an ordinary customer’s name, with no bakery told before publication. One is excluded: True Delicious of Petaluma, which shares an owner with this site. A bakery we own cannot be a bakery we score. It stays in the Register, marked, and out of every ranking we publish. Every box will be tasted within a week of arrival, blind, in randomized order, against a home-baked control. The packaged brands on the supermarket shelf sit outside this test by design; they are graded in the brand census instead.
Nothing on this page will ever be a number we didn’t earn. The verdicts appear when the tasting is finished, with the raw scores attached.
Bought in incognito. Every box purchased at retail under an ordinary customer’s name. No press samples, no freebies, ever.
One kitchen, one week. Tasted within seven days of arrival, blind, in randomized order, against a home-baked control.
Four axes, out of ten. Snap, flavour, crumb, value. The weighting is published with the results.
Shipping counts. A biscotto that arrives in pieces is a broken promise, and the score will say so.
Tests are published whether or not any sponsor’s product wins. No sponsor sees a piece before it runs. No affiliate link changes the order of a ranking. This paragraph appears in our footer for as long as the site exists.