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Zwieback
Take rusks of bread or biscuit left over from breakfast; cut in half. Place in baking-pan in moderate oven. Bake until thoroughly dry, and when dry freshen up the fire and bake a golden brown. Slices of bread can be used the same way. Keep dry after removing from oven and cooling by putting into a tin box.
This is a use-it-up method rather than a formula: stale rolls or bread are dried out completely, then browned. The whole trick is the two stages, and skipping the first one gives you toast that goes soft again in a day.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe gives no figures. "Moderate" in books of this period is usually taken as somewhere around 350F, though for a long drying stage a cooler oven is safer. "Freshening up the fire" means simply raising the heat for the browning stage; watch closely, as it colours quickly.
- Dry first, brown secondThe bread must be dried all the way through before it takes colour, or the centre stays damp and the zwieback softens in storage. The recipe gives no time; drying will take a good while at the lower heat, depending on thickness.
- What a rusk wasIn nineteenth-century American usage a rusk is generally a small enriched, slightly sweet roll, though this page says only "rusks of bread or biscuit." Any soft dinner roll, brioche or plain white loaf works; cut rolls in half, or slice a loaf about 1/2 inch thick.
- Test for donenessA finished piece snaps rather than bends and sounds hollow when tapped. Cool completely on a rack before it goes into any container.
- StorageThe tin box matters more than it sounds: any residual warmth or humidity trapped in a sealed jar will condense and soften the batch. Kept properly dry, zwieback holds several weeks.