Hokka Cigar Fry Biscuit

The name says fry and the biscuit is baked.

Hokka has been making Cigar Fry since the 1950s, and the word refers to the result rather than the method — thin sticks that come out of the oven as light and crisp as if they had been fried, with a faint salt finish.

Sesame oil and soybean oil go into the dough, which is where the toasted note comes from.

The oven is the part Hokka talks about. Most biscuit makers use a mesh belt, which lets heat through from below and produces a sturdier biscuit that sheds fewer crumbs.

Hokka uses a steel band instead, and the biscuits travel slowly along it.

The trade-off is deliberate: a steel belt makes the dough more fragile, but fragility is what gives Cigar Fry its kuchidoke, the way it collapses in the mouth rather than needing to be chewed.

The company accepts a more breakable biscuit to get there.

There is one more step that explains the flavour. Hokka takes finished Cigar Fry, crushes some of it, and works it back into the next batch of dough as an ingredient.

Baking already-baked wheat deepens the toasted character considerably, and it is why these taste more roasted than their ingredient list suggests.

Thin, salty, a little oily in the way old-fashioned Japanese biscuits are, and difficult to stop eating — Hokuriku Confectionery has been making them in Kanazawa for seventy years.

About this item
Item Name : Cigar Fry
Brand : Hokka (Hokuriku Seika)
Item Form : Cookie & Biscuit
Allergens: Wheat, milk
Amount of Items : 100g (Pack of 1)