Changes

Great, but what's the deal with the ring shape in the first place? Why not a ball or a disc, but a torus, which takes a great a lot more skill to form? Well, this shape has two advantages. First, a holey bread has only a slightly smaller volume with a much larger surface than a whole bread of comparable size (I'm leaving the proof by calculating the surface areas and volumes of a torus and an ellipsoid is left as an exercise for the Reader). And a larger surface area allows the heat to spread more evenly inside the dough during the thermal treatment (boiling or baking). Secondly, a holey bread is easier to transport, especially for a street vendor who can just put his (somehow it's usually been men) ''taralli'' on a string or a stick and peddle them in the street. And the customers could even wear their ''tarallo'' like a bracelet, if they didn't eat it right away.