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Brussels Rusks
Take, for preference, the dough made by the receipt for rusks designated as the best every-day sort, and when finished make it in long loaves and bake in tin moulds of brick shape. When a day old slice these and brown the slices in the oven.
Brioche dough is used in the same manner as the above, and also with carraway seeds mixed in. A teaspoonful does.
This is a finishing method rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already have an enriched bread dough on hand, and tells you how to turn it into twice-baked slices. The whole thing hinges on the day of rest between bakings.
- The cross-referenceThe "best every-day sort" of rusk dough is a separate entry elsewhere in the book, and this page assumes you have it. Any moderately enriched sweet dough — milk, butter, egg, a little sugar — should behave much the same way, as will a brioche, which the recipe itself allows.
- Tin moulds of brick shapeAn ordinary loaf pan. A 9x5 inch pan gives slices of roughly the proportions the book seems to expect; a narrower pullman tin gives a squarer, more uniform slice.
- Why a day oldFresh enriched bread is too soft and moist to slice cleanly, and its interior steam keeps the second bake from drying it through. A day of staling firms the crumb and lets you cut thin, even slices that dry rather than toast.
- Slice thicknessThe original gives none; about 1/2 inch is a reasonable reading. Thicker slices stay leathery in the middle; much thinner and any sugar and butter in the dough scorch before the centre dries.
- Browning in the ovenThe original gives no temperature and no oven-heat description at all. Around 300F for 15 to 25 minutes per side is one workable reading — the aim is to drive out moisture until the slice is crisp all the way through, not to colour the surface. High heat browns the outside while leaving a bendable core, which will go soft again within a day.
- CarawayThe recipe allows a teaspoonful of seed, worked into the dough at mixing rather than sprinkled on top, where it would be liable to burn during the second bake. It does not say what quantity of dough the teaspoonful covers.
- StorageCool completely on a rack before tinning. Any warmth trapped in the container will condense and undo the drying; properly dried rusks keep for weeks in an airtight tin.
- YieldOne 9x5 loaf gives roughly 18 to 20 rusks.
Rusk is bread baked twice, a method as old as the need to carry bread on ships and campaigns: the second baking removes the water that mould and staling depend on. The same idea runs through the Italian biscotto, the German Zwieback (literally "twice-baked"), the Dutch beschuit and the French biscotte. The "Brussels" label seems to attach to the richer end of the family — a sweetened, buttered dough, often brioche, sometimes caraway-scented — though nothing here explains how it came by the name.