brioche

Brioche

Brioche des Rois (served around Epiphany, esp. in Provence)

Still life with Brioche, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, 1763

Brioche is a highly enriched French bread, whose high egg and butter content give it what is seen as a rich and tender crumb. It has a dark, golden, and flaky crust from an egg wash applied before and after proofing.

Forms of brioche

Brioche à tête is perhaps the most classically recognized form. Brioche à tête rolls are panned in fluted tins with a small spherical piece of dough placed on top. Brioche Nanterre is a loaf of brioche panned in a standard loaf pan. Instead of shaping one piece of dough and baking it, two rows of small pieces of dough are placed in the pan. Loaves are then proofed in the pan, fusing the pieces together. During the baking process the balls of dough rise further and form an attractive pattern.

Typical core ingredients for brioche dough are:

• flour
• eggs
• butter
• sugar (optional, when used only in small quantity as food for yeast; not to sweeten)
• milk
• yeast
• salt

History

The word brioche first appeared in print in 1404, and this bread is believed to have sprung from a traditional Norman recipe. It is argued that brioche is probably of a Roman origin, since a very similar sort of sweet holiday bread is made in Romania ("sărălie"). The cooking method and tradition of using it during big holidays resembles the culture surrounding the brioche so much that it is difficult to doubt same origin of both foods.

Despite its origin in France the brioche is considered a viennoiserie. It is made in the same basic way as bread, but has the richer aspect of a pastry because of the extra addition of eggs, butter, milk, and occassionally a bit of sugar. Brioche, along with pain au lait and pain aux raisins — which are commonly eaten at breakfast or as a snack — form a leavened subgroup of viennoiserie. Brioche is often cooked with fruit or chocolate chips and served as a pastry or as the basis of a dessert with many local variations in added ingredients, fillings or toppings. Less rich versions of brioche are sometimes used in savoury meat dishes; most commonly stuffed with foie gras.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his autobiography Confessions (published posthumously in 1782, but completed in 1769), relates that "a great princess" is said to have advised, with regard to peasants who had no bread, "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche", commonly inaccurately translated as "Let them eat cake". This saying is commonly mis-attributed to Queen Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI.

Etymology

The word comes from Old Norman French verb « brier » (an old form of « broyer ») then used in the sense of « to, knead dough with a wooden roller»; the participle is also found in « pain brié », a norman specialty. The suffix -oche is added to the verb « brier » to désignate the product. The root, (bhreg), is of Germanic origin .^[1]

References

• Urban Legends: Marie Antoinette (About.Com)