Brioche
1 yeast cake 1 cup lukewarm water 8 eggs 1 cup milk Scald milk; when lukewarm add dissolved yeast cake; add remaining ingredients and beat well for one half hour. Let rise to double its bulk; cut down; keep in ice box over night; in the morning, shape.
For Coffee Cakes, make into biscuit, then into finger shapes, twist ends in opposite directions, shape in crescents, let rise in pan. Bake in moderate oven. Brush with confectioners' sugar dissolved in boiling water.
This mixture may be used for Buns.
As printed, the ingredient list is incomplete — there is no flour, butter or sugar, all of which the method assumes. Treat this as a working note from a cook who knew the proportions by heart rather than a formula you can follow line by line.
- The missing ingredientsA dough of eggs, milk, water and yeast alone will not shape into crescents or hold a rise. Flour, butter, sugar and salt are all assumed by the method and none is listed; with two cups of liquid and eight eggs the flour quantity alone would be substantial. Whether the line was dropped in setting the type or simply taken as understood, there is no way to recover the proportions from the page. If you want a reliable result, work from a complete brioche formula and use this page for its method.
- Yeast cakeCompressed yeast cakes of the era varied in size, commonly around 0.6 to 1 oz; the smaller size is roughly equivalent to 2 1/4 teaspoons of modern active dry or instant yeast, so start there and adjust. Dissolve it in the lukewarm water, not in the milk while the milk is still hot.
- Scalding the milkScalding raw milk was routine practice; one common explanation is that it deactivates enzymes that would otherwise slacken the gluten. With pasteurized milk you need only warm it, and in any case it must be lukewarm before it meets the yeast.
- Half an hour of beatingThis is the hinge. Brioche dough needs long, hard working to develop enough gluten to carry the eggs and butter. A stand mixer with the dough hook does the same job in 10 to 15 minutes on medium; the dough should pull away from the bowl in a single sheet.
- "Cut down"Period shorthand for deflating the risen dough — punch it down and fold it over on itself.
- The overnight chillRefrigerating the dough is not just a convenience. A cold, butter-rich dough shapes far more cleanly than a warm one, and the long cold rest also develops flavour. Overnight in the refrigerator, then shape while still cold.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperature; "moderate" is usually read as somewhere around 350-375F. Enriched, egg-heavy dough browns fast; small crescents and fingers will be done in 15 to 20 minutes.
- The glazeConfectioners' sugar dissolved in boiling water gives a thin, quick-setting wash. The recipe gives no proportions; add the water a little at a time until it brushes on thinly, and apply while the rolls are still warm.
Lowney's Cook Book was written by Maria Willett Howard and published in 1907 for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer — one of many corporate cookbooks that used a full domestic-science curriculum to sell one ingredient. That is why a French enriched dough sits in the bread chapter with no chocolate in sight: the book had to work as a general household manual first. Brioche itself is a Norman and Parisian butter-and-egg bread, documented in France since at least the fifteenth century, and its name is generally traced to the old verb brier, to knead or pound dough. The half-hour of beating and the overnight rest in the ice box are the method the book prescribes, and the note that the same dough serves for coffee cakes, crescents and buns suggests it was offered not as a delicacy in a fluted tin but as one adaptable sweet dough for the breakfast table.