HFF 5.22: Stars

The Challenge: Stars. Make a "star" dish to catch the eye. Or something star-shaped, inspired by the heavens, etc

The Recipe: French Bisket from The Cook's Guide (1664) or Bisket-Bread from The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight (1677) [with further reference to "To Make Bisket" The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened (1669).]

I chose these (very similar) recipes, in order to use some star anise.

The Date/Year and Region: 1664, England

How Did You Make It: I made one-third of the recipe from The Cook's Guide. In full, it called for:

•  1/2 peck [1 gallon or 16 cups] flour
  
• 2 oz anise seed [~4 Tbsp]
  
• 2 oz coriander seed [~4 Tbsp]
  
•  6 egg whites
• 1 pint ale-yeast [substitute 1 oz/28 g/4 tsp yeast in 1 pint water]
  
• enough water to make a paste

I took 5 1/3 cups all-purpose flour, and mixed in 2 1/4 tsp ground coriander and ~2/3 oz of star anise (hand-ground in a wooden mortar); to this I added 2/3 cup of water (with 2 tsp dry yeast proofed therein) and 2 egg whites, and mixed it all up, with an additional 1/2 cup of water to make a workable paste. I rolled this out by hand into long rolls, and divided in two to fit my largest pan. I baked the rolls at 325F for 30 minutes, then let them sit in the cooling oven overnight. The next evening, I cut them  into pieces about ~1/2" thick. For the icing, I beat 1 egg white into peaks, and stirred in 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 1 tsp rose-water. I iced the slices, and put them in an oven pre-heated to 325F and promptly turned off.

Total Time: 2 days. About 1 hour worth of work, separated by baking and cooling times.

Total Cost: I used ingredients on hand, no idea as to price.

How Successful Was It?: These are not great. To say the least. I expected something like hard-tack from the double-baking/drying instructions (not to mention the note that they "keep all year"), but was hoping for something closer to biscotti. It ended up like licorice-flavored hardtack. The only sugar's in the icing, so the overall effect if more like a hard bread than a cookie, but the anise flavor is very strong, and completely overwhelms the coriander and rosewater flavors. The icing was thinner than I would have liked (more like a glaze), which I'm blaming on the eggs not being beaten enough.

I did bring these to a reenactment, described as "anise abominations", and a weirdly large number of people were actually willing to try them. Exactly one person actually liked the texture (but agreed there was a bit much anise), while most others were morbidly curious and/or eager to experiment with what beverages the cakes could be soaked it to soften them.

How Accurate Is It? I hope that the texture/flavor issues are a result of user error. My scale really isn't meant for measuring less than 1/2 oz quantities, so I suspect that I ended up using more anise than was really called for. Regarding the baking, I thought from the instructions in The Closet that it really shouldn't be given much rising time, but on further reflection, note that that recipe only uses water (more like hardtack) while the eggs and barm/yeast in the other two could point towards a more bread-like treatment of the first baking (allowing time to rise, baking it somewhat faster, and then using a slower oven to dry it later). The Cook's Guide and Lady's Delight recipes differed only in the number of egg whites (4 versus 6) and days between bakes (1 or 2). I ended up mostly using the former, since it specified icing with egg white, sugar and rosewater, where the latter recipe just said to "sugar" the bisket.

 

Ingredients

 

Preparing for the second bake