Brioches
INGREDIENTS.-1 lb. of flour, lb. of butter, oz. of German yeast, 2 oz. of sugar, 6 eggs, salt, water. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 8d.
Put a little of the flour (about a quarter) on a board, hollow it in the centre and put in the yeast dissolved in a little warm water. Mix and set the sponge to rise in a covered pan near the fire. Put the remainder of the flour on the board, and after making a hole in the centre, put in the salt, butter, sugar and 4 eggs, and break in the other two, one after the other, and work till the paste is smooth. When the sponge has risen to double its original size, mix it with the paste and again set it to rise for 2 hours. Then put the paste on a board, press it out and fold it over two or three times and a third time set it to rise for 2 hours; once more press it out, fold it up and put it on ice till firm. This paste can be used to form small cakes, or for cases for compotes or custards.
A classic sponge-and-dough brioche, printed here with the fractions lost — the original text almost certainly read "½ lb. of butter" and "½ oz. of German yeast" or similar, so treat the quantities below as reconstruction rather than transcription.
- The stray heading"HOW TO CARVE A BRILL" belongs to a neighbouring entry and has nothing to do with the dough; how the two came to be run together on the page is not clear. Ignore it.
- Missing fractionsButter and yeast are given without their numerators. Rich brioche doughs commonly run somewhere near 8 oz butter to 1 lb flour, with roughly "1/2" oz fresh yeast; the figures are genuinely ambiguous as printed, so weigh by a modern brioche ratio rather than guessing at the gap.
- German yeastFresh compressed baker's yeast, sold in blocks. Substitute about a third of the weight in instant dried yeast, dissolved in warm — not hot — water for the sponge.
- SaltNo quantity is given, as was normal. About 1½ teaspoons (8-9 g) per pound of flour suits a sweetened enriched dough.
- "Put it on ice till firm"This is the hinge of the method. The chill sets the butter so the dough can be handled and shaped at all; the refrigerator does the same job, and an overnight rest there improves both flavour and handling.
- The foldsPressing out and folding between rises is not laminating — it is degassing and redistributing the butter. Keep the dough cool while you do it or the butter weeps out.
- No oven temperatureThe recipe stops at the dough, since it was written as a base. Small brioches bake at 400F/200C for 15-20 minutes; a large loaf at 375F/190C for 30-40 minutes, covering if it colours early.
- YieldA pound of flour gives roughly 16 small brioches à tête, or two 1 lb loaves, or a dozen shallow cases for compote and custard.
Brioche belongs to the northern French tradition of enriched, butter-heavy yeast doughs, and its long presence in English cookery books reflects the influence of French professional technique in nineteenth-century upper-middle-class kitchens. The name is generally traced to Norman dialect words for kneading or working dough, though the etymology has never been settled. What is telling here is the framing: the dough is offered not as a breakfast bread but as a component, a paste to be shaped into small cakes or hollow cases for compotes and custards, which is how a household with a cook and a set of moulds would have thought about it. An average cost of 1s. 8d. is given, as it is throughout the book.