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Brioche
1 cake compressed yeast 1/2 cup milk, scalded and cooled 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup butter 4 cups sifted flour 8 eggs Dissolve the yeast and one tablespoon of sugar in the lukewarm milk; add one cup of flour to make sponge. Beat well; cover and ; add one cup of flour to make sponge. Beat well; cover and set to rise in warm place, free from draft, until light-about three quarters of an hour. To the rest of the flour add one tablespoon of sugar, butter softened, four eggs and salt. Beat all in well; add sponge and beat again thoroughly; add the other four eggs, unbeaten, one at a time, beating thoroughly. Cover and let rise until light-about four hours, and beat again. Chill in the refrigerator over night . In the morning, shape by rolling under hand into long strips about twenty-seven inches long and three fourths inch thick, bringing ends together, and twist like a rope. Form into rings; • Coffee Loaf Cake
A classic rich brioche dough, here shaped into twisted rings rather than the fluted brioche à tête. The page as printed is damaged: a line of the sponge instructions repeats, and the recipe breaks off mid-sentence at "Form into rings;" with no proof, egg wash or baking directions at all. Everything below the shaping stage has to be supplied from standard practice.
- The yeastOne cake of compressed yeast is the old 0.6 oz fresh cake, equivalent to about 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast. If using instant, it can go straight into the flour, though dissolving it in the scalded-and-cooled milk as written does no harm.
- Milk temperature"Scalded and cooled" is usually explained as a survival from unpasteurised days, when scalding was held to destroy enzymes that weakened gluten. With modern pasteurised milk it is generally treated as unnecessary; the recipe asks only for lukewarm milk, around 100F.
- Butter and eggs by weightOne cup of butter is 8 oz / 225 g. Eight large eggs give roughly 400 g of egg, which against 4 cups of sifted flour (roughly 450-480 g) makes a very slack dough; seven large eggs may be closer to the intended balance.
- Beating the doughThis is a hand-beaten dough, and the repeated "beat thoroughly" is the whole method. A stand mixer with the dough hook does it in 10-15 minutes on medium: work the butter and eggs in until the dough pulls away from the bowl in a shiny sheet before the second rise.
- The overnight chill is not optionalThe overnight chill -- A dough this rich is difficult to shape at room temperature, as the butter smears. The cold night in the refrigerator firms the fat and develops flavour, and the dough is best rolled straight from the fridge while still cold.
- ShapingTwenty-seven inches at three-quarters of an inch thick is a substantial rope. Folding it end to end and twisting gives a two-strand cable of about thirteen inches, joined into a ring roughly four inches across. The dough will fight back; rest it a few minutes if it resists rolling.
- What the page omitsAfter shaping, the rings need a final proof, covered, until nearly doubled and puffy — about 1 1/2 to 2 hours from cold. Brush with beaten egg and bake in a moderately hot oven, 375F, for 20 to 25 minutes, until deep brown and 190F at the centre.
- YieldThe dough weighs something over 2 1/2 lb and makes six generous rings, or two 9x5 inch loaves if you would rather not twist.
- Filed oddlyThe page ends with a stray cross-reference to Coffee Loaf Cake. Loose-leaf cookbooks were meant to be taken apart and reordered, so pages could end up under the wrong tab.
Brioche belongs to the French repertoire of enriched breads that sit between bread and pastry, and its defining feature is the proportion of butter and egg to flour — here a full cup of butter and eight eggs to four cups of flour, which is a rich dough by any standard. American cookbooks were carrying it by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as domestic-science teaching moved beyond plain bread into what was often called "fancy breads," and the twisted ring shape given here is a homelier cousin of the fluted, topknotted mould more familiar in France. Mrs. Fryer's book is a loose-leaf production, sold as sheets in a binder so the cook could add, remove and rearrange pages.