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Brioche
Prepare a sponge of German yeast dissolved in a little warm water, and mix it with enough flour to form a batter. When it has risen to twice its original size, place it one side and put on a paste-board a pound of flour, make a bay in the center and in it put a pound of warmed fresh butter, a teacupful of milk, ten eggs, a little salt and the sponge, and work together, adding flour as needed. Place it in a basin with a cover and stand it in a warm temperature for three hours. Then roll out and fold three times in succession; remove about a quarter of the paste, making the remainder round and slightly flattened at the top, wet the bottom of the smaller piece of paste, making a ball of that also, flatten it and put on top of the larger one; then glaze over with a paste-brush dipped in beaten egg, set on a buttered tin and bake in a quick oven for three-quarters of an hour.
A classic brioche à tête written in the shorthand of a professional hotel kitchen, where a good deal was assumed. The proportions are sound; the handling instructions are where the gaps are.
- The hinge: warm butter, not melted"Warmed fresh butter" means pliable and plastic at about 65F, worked to the same consistency as the dough. Melted butter will not emulsify into the paste and the baked crumb turns greasy and dense.
- German yeastCompressed fresh cake yeast. About one cake (0.6-0.7 oz), equivalent to roughly 2 1/4 tsp instant dry yeast, will carry a pound of flour. Dissolve in water no hotter than blood heat.
- Weights and cupsA pound of flour is about 3 1/2 cups; a pound of butter is four sticks, an equal weight of butter to flour, which is a rich brioche even by French standards. A teacupful is usually reckoned at somewhere between 4 and 6 fl oz.
- Ten eggsEggs of the period averaged smaller than today's large. Eight to nine large eggs, weighed at about 1 lb out of shell, comes closer to the intended hydration.
- Chill before shapingThe recipe goes straight from a three-hour warm rise to rolling and folding. A dough this buttery is unworkable at room temperature. Modern practice is a cold retard, several hours or overnight in the refrigerator, before the folds and shaping.
- "Quick oven" needs qualifyingA quick oven is 425-450F. That is right for the first ten minutes of a large brioche but will scorch the crust long before the center sets over three-quarters of an hour. Drop to 350-375F after the initial blast, or tent with foil, and bake to an internal 190F.
- Egg wash disciplineGlaze the top only and keep it off the seam where the head meets the body. Egg that runs down and sets glues the layers and the tête topples sideways as it rises.
- Tin and yieldA buttered fluted brioche mould supports the shape better than a flat tin. This quantity makes one large loaf of about 3 lb, serving ten to twelve, or a dozen individual brioches baked in 15-20 minutes.
Brioche belongs to the enriched breads of northern France, and the name is generally traced to the old verb brier, a Norman form of broyer, to pound or work dough with a roller — Normandy being butter country, which suits a loaf built on equal weights of butter and flour. The topknot shape, the brioche à tête, was standard bakery work in Paris by the nineteenth century and travelled with French chefs into the grand hotels. Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, compiled this book in 1896 from the working practice of a kitchen staffed and organised on French lines, which is why the instruction reads as a reminder to someone who already knows the method rather than a recipe for a home baker. The specification of "German yeast" dates it neatly: compressed fresh yeast was a relatively recent commercial product in American kitchens, and cookbooks of the 1890s still distinguished it from the homemade and brewer's yeasts it was replacing.