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Bread Sticks
Take rusk or bread dough-rusk is better and when light cut pieces from the side and roll under the hands to the length of the pan and the thickness of a lead pencil. Let rise until light; bake in a hot oven and when nearly done glaze with beaten egg.
A one-paragraph sketch rather than a formula: it assumes you already have bread or rusk dough rising on the counter. The details that matter are the dough choice, the oven heat, and the late glaze.
- "Rusk dough"In many American books of this period rusk means a sweet enriched bread dough — flour, milk, butter, sugar, egg, yeast — closer to a soft roll than to the dry twice-baked rusk sold in Europe. Such a dough browns readily in a thin stick, though the recipe says only that rusk "is better" and gives no reason. Any enriched white bread dough will do; no quantity is specified.
- A hot ovenIn period usage a "hot oven" is usually taken as somewhere around 425–450F, though the book gives no figures. Sticks a pencil thick would bake quickly, and a slack oven risks drying them before they colour.
- "Cut pieces from the side"She appears to mean cutting portions off the risen mass without punching the whole batch down, so the rest keeps rising while you roll. The length is set by whatever pan you are using; the recipe names no size or weight.
- Rolling under the handsRoll on an unfloured surface if the dough will cooperate — a little friction is what lets it stretch and stay even. Too much flour and the sticks slip and taper.
- The second rise"Until light" is the recipe's only guide, and for sticks this thin it presumably means a short proof rather than fully doubled; over-proofed thin sticks are apt to slacken and spread.
- Glazing when nearly doneThis is the unusual instruction. Brushing beaten egg on in the last minutes of baking gives gloss and colour with less risk of the egg scorching in a hot oven than an early wash would carry. The recipe calls simply for beaten egg and gives no quantity.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield, since the amount of dough is left to whatever batch you have going. Thin baked sticks are best eaten fresh, or re-crisped in a hot oven.
- Section headingThe page is filed under Frozen Desserts, which does not match the dish; it is a bread recipe. Why it sits there is not clear from the page itself.
Bread sticks appear in American cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s as a thin, crisp accompaniment to soup or salad, eaten in place of a roll. This recipe takes the economical route of drawing on dough already rising rather than mixing a separate batch: a household baking bread or rusk could pull off a few pieces and produce something that looked bought. Mrs. Fryer's book was issued in loose-leaf form, with pages meant to be removed, rearranged and added to, which may bear on how a bread recipe comes to sit under Frozen Desserts.