Home › Bread and Rolls › Rusks
Rusks
2 1/4 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons maple or brown sugar 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1 egg 1/3 to 2/3 cup water 2 tablespoons shortening Sift together flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg and cinnamon; add beaten egg and water to make soft dough; add melted shortening and mix well. Turn out on floured board; with floured hands shape into small rolls; place on greased shallow pan close together; allow to stand 10 to 15 minutes before baking; brush with milk and sprinkle with a little maple or brown sugar. Bake in moderate oven 20 to 30 minutes.
For hot cross buns, with sharp knife make deep cross cuts; brush with butter, sprinkle with sugar and bake.
A quick-bread version of a rusk: no yeast, no second baking, just a spiced baking-powder dough shaped into rolls that touch in the pan so they steam soft at the sides. A few things need translating.
- Add the water graduallyThe 1/3 to 2/3 cup range is enormous, and it is the one instruction that decides the result. Beat the egg first, then add water a spoonful at a time until the dough is soft but still holds a shape under floured hands — stiff dough gives dry, biscuit-like rusks.
- Moderate ovenTake it as 350 to 375F, the usual range for "moderate". At 20 to 30 minutes for small rolls, check at 20; they are done when the tops are firm and the sugar crust has set.
- That 10 to 15 minute restNot a proof. Chemical leaveners begin working on contact with liquid, but the rest lets the flour hydrate and the rolls relax so they rise evenly. Do not stretch it much past 15 minutes or the lift will be spent before the pan reaches the oven.
- Four teaspoons of baking powderHigh by current standards for 2 1/4 cups of flour, and the recipe carries no yeast at all. With a modern double-acting powder, 3 teaspoons is closer to the mark and less likely to leave a metallic edge.
- ShorteningIn this period it normally means a solid fat, lard or a vegetable shortening. Melted butter works and tastes better, though it browns faster; watch the bottoms.
- Placed close togetherSetting the rolls so their sides touch is deliberate. They rise into each other and stay pale and tender where they meet.
- Maple sugarGranulated maple sugar was a familiar pantry item and is still sold; the recipe itself names brown sugar as the alternative, though the flavour differs.
- The hot cross bun variationThere is no fruit or peel in it — the cross is cut into the dough rather than piped in flour paste or icing, so it bakes open and browns. Currants, if you want them, go in with the dry ingredients, about 1/2 cup.
- YieldNo yield or pan size is given; expect roughly a dozen small rolls from this much dough in a shallow pan. Best the day they are made; they stale quickly, as baking-powder breads tend to.
A true rusk is twice-baked — a roll or slice dried in a slow oven until crisp, the same principle as biscotti or Dutch beschuit — and it was long a nursery and invalid food because it kept for weeks and softened in milk or tea. By the early twentieth century American cookbooks were using the word loosely for any small sweet spiced roll, and this recipe is squarely in that later sense: baked once, eaten soft. The branded ingredient suggests it may come from one of the baking powder promotional cookbooks, which were distributed cheaply or free and seem intended to demonstrate that anything formerly raised with yeast could be raised faster with their tin — hence, perhaps, the generous four teaspoons and the hot cross bun variation at the end, offering a Good Friday bread that could be made in under an hour rather than overnight.