No. 3266

Biscuits

Sift one pound of flour on a table, divide it into four parts, and take one of these to make the leaven by making a circle with the flour and diluting half an ounce of compressed yeast with a little tepid water, then mix to make a soft paste; shape this leaven into a ball and cut a cross on top; lay it in a deep vessel and cover, leaving it to rise to double its height. Make a hollow in the center of the remaining flour, lay in it two ounces of sugar, a pinch of salt, seven whole eggs and two yolks; mix well together to form a paste, working it well so that it obtains considerable body, and then incorporate three ounces of butter. As soon as the leaven is ready mix it well but lightly into the paste, then lay it in a vessel and cover to let it rise to double its volume. Afterward knead it and with it fill some tin or sheet-iron half cylindrical molds, three and a half inches in diameter by twelve inches long, and previously buttered. Leave them until the dough rises as high as the level of the edges, then set these molds in the oven so the biscuits bake all alike to a fine golden color. Unmold them as soon as they are done and cut them across in quarter-inch slices; range these on tins and push into a slack oven to brown slightly.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a twice-baked rusk in the French manner — an enriched yeast loaf baked in a half-round mold, sliced, and dried out again. Ranhofer gives no temperatures, so the numbers below fill the gaps.

The hinge: two bakes, two heatsRanhofer gives no temperatures. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, will bake the loaf through to a fine golden colour; for the second bake he calls for a slack oven, generally reckoned somewhere around 250-300F, and asks that the slices "brown slightly" — so a slow bake that dries them through while taking a little colour, perhaps 20-40 minutes, turned once, until crisp all the way through. Rushing the second bake at loaf temperature gives you toast that goes leathery within a day.
Cool before slicingQuarter-inch slices off a warm enriched loaf will tear and compress. Ranhofer says unmold as soon as done, which is right, but let the loaf go completely cold — overnight is better — before cutting with a long serrated knife.
Compressed yeastHalf an ounce of compressed (fresh cake) yeast is about 14 g. If substituting, use roughly 1.5 teaspoons instant dry yeast, or 2 teaspoons active dry proofed in the tepid water as directed.
The leaven and the crossA quarter of the flour is diluted with the yeast and tepid water to a soft paste, as Ranhofer directs, shaped into a ball and cut with a cross. The cross is traditional, and is often said to act as a gauge — the cut opening as the ball rises — though Ranhofer does not say so. Reckon roughly an hour at room temperature to double.
Weights in cupsOne pound of flour is about 3.5 to 4 cups; two ounces of sugar is about a quarter cup; three ounces of butter is six tablespoons. Seven whole eggs and two yolks is a genuinely rich brioche-style dough — expect it to be slack and sticky before the butter goes in.
Working the paste"Considerable body" means gluten development: the egg-and-flour dough should be beaten or kneaded until it pulls away from the bowl in a sheet before the softened butter is added a little at a time. Adding butter early is the usual cause of a dough that never comes together.
The moldsHalf-cylindrical rusk molds 3.5 by 12 inches are specialist equipment. A narrow Pullman pan, a long thin loaf pan, or a foil-lined half-round gutter gives the same effect; what matters is a small cross-section so each slice is a manageable round.
YieldRanhofer says "molds" in the plural, so the batch may fill more than one; a single 12-inch loaf cut at quarter-inch slices gives something on the order of 40 to 50 finished rusks. Stored airtight when fully dry they keep for weeks.

A Little History

"Biscuit" here carries its literal sense — from the Latin bis coctus, twice cooked — rather than the American soft breakfast biscuit, and the recipe is essentially the French biscotte, first cousin to German zwieback and Italian biscotti. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's across some three decades and author of The Epicurean (1894), filed it among the breakfast cakes; rusks of this kind were commonly served with coffee or chocolate and given to invalids and children as a digestible bread. The twice-baking is a preservation technique older than any of these names: drying the crumb out completely drives off the moisture that mold and staling need, which is why ship's biscuit, rusk and zwieback all share the same method — though "rusk" comes from a different root and is not itself a twice-baked name. The lavish enrichment — seven whole eggs and two yolks to a pound of flour — is what marks this as a restaurant version rather than a thrift measure.