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Rusk
1 cake compressed yeast 2 cups milk, scalded and cooled 1 tablespoon sugar 6 cups sifted flour 1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup currants Dissolve the yeast and one tablespoon of sugar in the lukewarm milk; add to it half the flour, to make an ordinary sponge. Beat well; cover and set aside in a warm place to rise, for about an hour. When light, add to it the butter and sugar creamed, egg well beaten, the currants, which have previously been washed and floured, and the remainder of the flour, or sufficient to make a soft dough; last add the salt. Knead lightly; place in greased bowl; cover and set aside in a warm place, free from draft, to rise for about two or two and a half hours. When well risen, turn out on a kneading board and mold into rolls. Place in well-greased pans; cover and let rise again for about one hour, or until double in bulk. Brush with egg diluted with milk. Bake in a hot oven for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Upon removing from oven sprinkle with powdered sugar. 1 cake compressed yeast 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 1 tablespoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup butter 3 cups sifted flour Dissolve the yeast and one tablespoon of sugar in the lukewarm milk; add one and one half cups of flour. Beat until smooth; then add butter and sugar creamed, the rest of the flour and salt. Knead lightly, keeping dough soft; cover and set aside in a warm place, free from draft, to rise until double in bulk-about one and a half hours. Mold into small, round buns; place in well-greased pans, one inch apart. Cover; set aside to rise until light-about one hour. Brush with egg, diluted with water; bake twenty minutes. Just before removing from the oven, brush with sugar moistened with a little water.
Two versions of the same enriched yeast bun, one with currants and one plain. Both are straightforward sweet doughs; the only real obstacles are the yeast measurement and the oven description.
- A cake of compressed yeastCompressed fresh yeast came in cakes of about 0.6 oz. Substitute one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast for each cake called for.
- "Hot oven"Read this as 400-425F. At that heat the sweet, egg-washed tops color fast, so check at twelve minutes and tent with foil if they are browning before the centers set.
- Scalding the milkScalding was done to kill wild organisms and deactivate enzymes in raw milk. With pasteurized milk the reason largely falls away, and warm milk — about 110F — will generally serve.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, small dried grapes, not fresh red or black currants. Washing and then tossing them in flour keeps them from sinking and from clumping in the dough.
- The egg in the second recipeThe second ingredient list has no egg, yet the method calls for brushing with egg diluted with water. Have one egg on hand for the wash.
- Soft dough is the pointBoth versions insist on a soft dough and light kneading. Resist adding flour to stop the stickiness; a stiff dough gives a dry, bready rusk rather than a tender one.
- Sugar glazeThe second version's sugar-and-water brush is applied just before the buns come out, setting into a thin sugar glaze. Pull the pan, brush quickly, and return it for the last minute or two.
- YieldNeither recipe gives a yield. Six cups of flour will make something on the order of two dozen rolls, and three cups about a dozen small buns, depending on how large they are molded. Both are best the day they are baked.
A rusk was originally a piece of bread baked twice until dry and hard, the same idea as ship's biscuit or Italian biscotti, valued because it kept for weeks and could be soaked in milk, wine or broth. In American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the word drifted: it came to mean a rich, sweet, milk-and-butter yeast roll, glazed with egg and dusted with sugar, whether or not it was ever dried out a second time. Both recipes here are of that later kind.