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French Gingerbread
Mix a tablespoonful of ground ginger and half a tablespoonful each of ground aniseed and ground cloves with a pound and a half of flour; then mix in one pound of molasses and work it until quite smooth. Cover the paste over with a cloth and leave it until the following day; then roll it out and with a round tin cutter about two inches in diameter stamp the paste out into rounds. Butter a baking-sheet, lay the gingerbreads on it, brush them over with a paste brush dipped in beaten egg, and bake for half an hour in a moderate oven. The cakes should be kept in biscuit tins in a dry place.
A stiff, unleavened spice paste closer to French pain d'épices than to soft American gingerbread. The overnight rest is not optional garnish — it is what makes the dough workable and the flavour whole.
- Why the rest mattersWith no fat, no sugar beyond the molasses and no leavening, this dough is bound only by hydrated flour. Leaving it under a cloth until the next day, as the recipe directs, should let the molasses penetrate the flour so the paste rolls more easily, and is likely to mellow the raw edge of the spice. Rolled the same day, it may well be more crumbly and sharper-tasting.
- Weights, not cupsA pound and a half of flour is roughly 5 1/2 cups scooped, but weigh it — at this ratio a cup either way is the difference between a workable paste and rubble. A pound of molasses is about 1 1/3 cups; measure it on a scale as well, since molasses clings to the cup.
- Getting it to come togetherCold molasses is hard to work into that much flour. Warm it to about body temperature first and work the paste with the heel of the hand or a stand mixer with the paddle. If it still refuses to cohere, a tablespoon or two of warm water will help, though the original calls for none; the paste should be stiff, like modelling clay, not sticky.
- A moderate ovenAround 350F. A thermometer is more reliable than guessing.
- Half an hour is a long timeTwo-inch rounds of a dry, sugar-free paste will be very hard after thirty minutes at 350F; the direction to keep them in biscuit tins in a dry place suggests hardness was acceptable. If you want something you can bite into on the day, check at 15 to 18 minutes, when the tops are set and dull.
- The egg washBeaten whole egg brushed on before baking gives a dark, glossy surface. A second coat halfway through baking deepens the gloss.
- AniseedGround anise loses volatility fast. Buy whole aniseed and grind it, or the half tablespoon called for will register as nothing against the ginger and cloves.
- Yield and keepingRoll to a scant quarter inch; at that thickness this quantity of paste gives well over fifty two-inch rounds, more if scraps are rerolled. Store airtight in a dry place, as the recipe directs.
French gingerbread is the English name generally given to pain d'épices, the honey-and-spice bread associated above all with Reims and Dijon, and often said to have been made in France since the late Middle Ages. The distinguishing note in Oscar Tschirky's version is the aniseed: French versions of the bread characteristically carry anise, clove and sometimes coriander, and are traditionally made with honey and rye flour rather than molasses and wheat. Oscar's book, published in 1896 while he was maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, was compiled for a hotel whose repertoire was self-consciously continental.