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Brioche, or Butter Rusks
1 pound of good, lively, roll dough. 6 ounces of butter. 2 ounces of sugar. Half cup of milk or cream. 10 yolks of eggs. Little salt. 1 1/4 pounds of flour.
They require 5 hours time to make, raise and bake.
Warm the butter, sugar and cream, with the dough, together in a pan, and then mix thoroughly. Beat in the yolks, two at a time, and most of the flour, gradually bringing the mixture to a smooth, yellow dough. Then knead it thoroughly, and after that set it away to rise. In about three hours knead the dough the second time, and an hour after knead once more, then make out as directed for French rolls and notch the edges with a knife, to make the shape shown in the cut of rolls.
They rise and bake in the same time as rolls. Brush over with butter when done.
This is a bakery-style brioche built on a piece of pre-fermented bread dough rather than fresh yeast, which is where most of its flavor comes from. The instructions assume you have already read the book's entry for French rolls, so a few blanks need filling.
- "Lively roll dough"A pound of already-risen, actively fermenting plain roll dough — what a bakery would have on the bench. Substitute a pound of any lean white bread dough that has had a full first rise, or make a simple dough the night before with about 2 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup water, a pinch of yeast and salt and let it ferment cool overnight.
- Weights in cups6 ounces butter is 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks); 2 ounces sugar is a scant 1/3 cup; 1 1/4 pounds flour is roughly 4 1/2 cups, though the recipe tells you to hold some back and you should. The dough wants to stay soft.
- Warm means barely warmThe hinge of the recipe. The recipe has you warm the butter, sugar and cream together with the fermented dough in one pan, so the heat must be gentle: lukewarm to the finger, no more. Too much heat damages the yeast and sets the yolks as they are beaten in two at a time.
- Ten yolksA little over half a cup of yolk from large eggs, about 10 tablespoons. This is a yolk-rich dough in the French manner; the whites are not used here, so plan a meringue or an angel food to follow.
- The three kneadingsKnead once at mixing, again after about three hours, and once more an hour later. These are punch-downs meant to build strength in a very slack, buttery dough — brief folding on the bench, not another ten minutes of work.
- Chill before shapingNot in the original. A dough this rich is unmanageable at warm room temperature; refrigerate it an hour before you shape and notch it, and the cuts will hold.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no temperature, only that they "rise and bake in the same time as rolls." A hot oven, in modern terms roughly 400 to 425F for 15 to 20 minutes for small rolls, is a reasonable equivalent. They color fast because of the sugar and yolk; check at 12 minutes and tent if needed.
- YieldThe full recipe is close to 3 1/2 pounds of dough — about two dozen rolls of ordinary dinner size.
- The butter brushBrushing with melted butter straight from the oven, rather than egg wash before baking, gives the soft matte crust that distinguishes these from a glazed brioche à tête.
Brioche is a rich yolk-and-butter yeast bread associated with northern France, and the name is generally traced to Norman dialect rather than to any single baker. What marks this as a working bake shop's recipe rather than a household one is its starting point: a pound of "good, lively" roll dough already fermenting on the bench. Using yesterday's fermentation to raise today's enriched bread was a common practice long before packaged yeast was reliable — it gave both leavening power and acidity. The five-hour schedule and the casual cross-reference to "French rolls" both assume a reader working through a full day's production, not baking a single batch.