Rusks

Image Credit: Anrie, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This recipe makes about 70 rusks (in the Holmes household, that's enough for about a week!)

Ingredients

1kg self-raising flour.

5ml salt.

10ml baking powder.

250g sugar.

40ml Aniseed.

350g butter (at room temperature).

2 large eggs.

500ml buttermilk.

Method

Preheat overn to 180°C.

Grease a large baking pan.

Sift the flour; salt; baking powder and sugar together in a large bowl and mix in the aniseed.

Rub the biutter into the dry ingredients.

Mix the eggs and buttermilk together in a seperate bowl. 

Add the egg-buttermik mix to the dry ingredients and cut in with a blunt knife to make a dough.

Knead lightly to make sure all the ingredients and mixeed well.

Press the dough into the baking pan.

Place in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes.

Take out after 30 minutes, allow to cool and cut into ca. 2 cm thick slices.

Spread the slices evenly on two large oven trays with enough space between them for the air to circulate and dry the rusks.

Dry out in the oven at 100°C for about 5 hours turning the rusks every hour.

Variations

You can also replace the aniseed with museli; nuts; raisins or bran. You can also swap the sugar with condensed milk (Milchmädchen / Dovogan Moloko).

History

In the South African context, Rusks is the anglicized term for Beskuit - a traditional Afrikaner breakfast meal or snack. They have been made in South Africa since the late 1690s as a way of preserving bread, especially when traveling long distances without refrigeration. Their use continued through the Great Trek and the South Afican War through to the modern day. Rusks are typically dunked in coffee or tea before being eaten.

The biggest selling brand of (ready-made) rusks in South Africa is Ouma. Ouma is a South African rusk made from a recipe similar to the one above. It was first produced in the rural town of Molteno, in the Eastern Cape, by Elizabeth Ann Greyvenstyn in 1939, in response to an initiative by the town's pastor to help the entrepreneurial efforts of the women in his congregation.

They were first sold under the brand name Outspan Rusks but was changed soon after to 'Ouma' (Afrikaans for grandmother).

In 1941, the Governmental Industrial Development Corporation gave its first start-up loan to Ouma Rusks for £1.500 (today worth about €100.000,00). 

Ouma was bought by Fedfood in the 1970s which eventually become RCL Foods and they still operate the Ouma Rusks factory in the town of Molteno employing 250 people.