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French Rusks
2 cups scalded milk 1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 yeast cake dissolved in Flour 1 egg Yolks 2 eggs Whites 2 eggs 3/4 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 cup lukewarm water Add butter, sugar, and salt to scalded milk; when lukewarm add dissolved yeast cake and three cups flour. Cover and let rise; add egg and egg yolks well beaten, and enough flour to knead. Let rise again, and shape as Parker House Rolls. Before baking, make three parallel creases on top of each roll. When nearly done, brush over with whites of eggs beaten slightly, diluted with one tablespoon cold water and vanilla. Sprinkle with sugar. Rusks (Zwieback) 1/2 cup scalded milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 yeast cakes 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup melted butter 3 eggs Flour Add yeast cakes to milk when lukewarm; then add salt and one cup flour, and let rise until very light. Add sugar, butter, eggs unbeaten, and flour enough to handle.
Shape as finger rolls, and place close together on a buttered sheet in parallel rows, two inches apart; let rise again and bake twenty minutes. When cold, cut diagonally in one-half inch slices, and brown evenly in oven.
Two related sweet yeast breads printed together: the enriched French rusk rolls, and true Zwieback, which is baked, sliced and dried a second time. Both are straightforward once you translate the yeast and the oven.
- Yeast cakesOne yeast cake of the period is usually treated as roughly equivalent to one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, or a 0.6 oz cake of fresh yeast, though period cakes varied in size and strength. The Zwieback's two cakes will hurry the rise; one packet should also serve if given longer.
- Flour quantityNeither recipe states a total, so flour must be judged by feel. The French rusk dough will take appreciably more than the 3 cups first named, and the Zwieback perhaps 3 cups or so; add only until the dough leaves the bowl and is still slightly tacky.
- Scalded milkScalding is usually explained as destroying something in raw milk thought to weaken gluten; with pasteurized milk it is generally held to be unnecessary. Simply warm the milk to about 110F before adding the yeast, and be certain it is no hotter.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake both at 375F. The French rusk rolls need roughly 15 to 18 minutes; the Zwieback fingers take the stated twenty minutes.
- The egg-white glazeThe whites go on near the end rather than before baking, which keeps the sprinkled sugar from taking the full heat and scorching. Add it in the last three or four minutes.
- Shaped as Parker House rollsA round of dough creased with the back of a knife slightly off-center, then folded over and the edges pressed, so the two halves do not align.
- The second bakeThis is the step that makes Zwieback rather than a sweet roll. Slice the cooled fingers half an inch thick and dry them at 300F, turning once, until pale gold and crisp through, about 15 to 20 minutes. If they bend when cool they were not dried long enough.
- YieldThe French rusks give about 20 to 24 rolls; the Zwieback yields roughly 30 slices.
Zwieback means "twice-baked" in German, the same idea behind Italian biscotti and the ship's biscuit: a bread dried a second time so it keeps for weeks and travels without spoiling. By the time this book was written the twice-baked roll had shifted from a keeping-bread to an invalid and nursery food, recommended for teething children and for people recovering from illness, since it dissolves in milk or tea without needing much chewing. The "French rusk" beside it is the same family of enriched, egg-and-butter dough left soft and glazed with sugar. Recipes of this sort belong to the era when Boston cooking-school teaching pushed toward measured cups and standardized rolls, though as here the flour was still left to the cook's judgment.