Aniseed Rusks
A simple recipe that can be made and eaten straight from the oven with butter or dry out and create the most dunkable old school rusks.
Print
Pin
Servings: 20 balls
Equipment
- baking tray 23cm radius
- oven or dehydrator
Ingredients
Dough
- 730g/5 cups cake flour or all purpose flour
- 15g/2 ½ tbsps aniseed toasted, whole
- 10g/1 tbsp instant yeast
- 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt
- 200g/1 cup sugar light brown or white
- 125g/1/2 cups butter melted
- 1 large egg
- 1 ½ cups/ ml milk
- dash of oil
Glaze
- 1 tbsp sugar
- ⅛ cup water
Instructions
- In a small pan toast the aniseeds until fragrant and set aside. Note: this is optional, I prefer my aniseed rusks to have a stronger aniseed flavour.
- In a large bowl or a stand mixer, combine flour, instant yeast, and toasted whole aniseed, mix until mostly combined. Set aside.
- In a separate, medium heatproof bowl, add butter and microwave until the butter has fully melted. Once melted, add sugar, an egg and milk. Mix until mostly combined.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. Using your hands or an stand mixer. Once combined, coat the dough with some oil and allow to double in size at room temperature, about 1-2 hours. Once doubled, place the dough in the fridge to rise overnight. Note: the dough is very sticky so mixing it manually will be a bit challenging. I kneaded the dough for around 3 minutes on a clean working surface but take note, this was a sticky process indeed - at least I know the ingredients were well combined.
- Line a baking tray with melted butter. Remove the dough from the fridge and section the chilled dough into 20 balls weighing approx. 70g each. Tightly pack the balls into a lined baking tray.
- Allow to rise at room temperature for for another hour or until doubled in size. Preheat the oven to 180℃/375℉. Bake for 60 minutes or until dark brown on top and well risen.
- Meanwhile, melt the sugar and water together. Remove from the oven and release from the baking tray. Brush the top with the glaze ensuring you've covered the surface generously. Serve immediately with butter OR gently start pulling them apart once they're cool enough to handle but still warm.
- Drying: place the pulled apart pieces of brioche on a drying tray and set the oven/dehydrator to 90℃/194℉. Dry for 4 hours or overnight with the oven door slightly ajar.
- Once they're fully dried, you can pop on the kettle, make that cup of tea or coffee and get dunking!