Rusks

rusks are composed of bread dough incorporating sugar, eggs, and butter. It is shaped into a loaf or cylinder, baked, cooled, and sliced and then dried in low heat until hard. Rusks have a low water content and keep well. Sharing a common origin with the modern biscuit, medieval rusks were known as panis biscoctus (meaning ‘twice-cooked bread’) and were used as a form of preserved bread to provision armies and ships at sea (see ship’s biscuit).

In many countries there are products which resemble rusks in that they are essentially oven-dried bread of wheat or other grain, whether plain (e.g. paximadia, bruschetta) or of a sweet kind; but they may incorporate other ingredients such as spices or nuts, and are given individual names according to recipe.