Brioche Paste

Ingredients

• a couple of pounds of fine dry flour
• half an ounce of yeast
• half an ounce of salt
• as much fine sifted sugar
• a pound of butter
• six fresh eggs

Method

1. 1

   Make a leaven with flour, yeast, and warm water.

2. 2

   Mix the remaining flour with salt, sugar, cream, and butter.

3. 3

   Add eggs and work into a smooth paste.

4. 4

   Incorporate the leaven and knead.

5. 5

   Shape into balls and glaze with egg yolk before baking.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Modern cookery, in all its branches (1884) by Eliza Acton, page 315. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

BRIOCHE PASTE. The brioche is a rich, light kind of unsweetened bun or cake, very commonly sold, and served to all classes of people in France, where it is made in great perfection by good cooks and pastrycooks. It is fashionable now at English tables, though in a different form, serving principally as a crust to enclose rissoles , or to make cannelons and fritters. We have seen it recommended for a vol-au-vent , for which we should say it does not answer by any means so well as the fine puff-paste called feuilletage. The large proportion of butter and eggs which it contains render it to many persons highly indigestible ; and we mention this to warn invalids against it, as we have known it to cause great suffering to persons out of health. To make it, take a couple of pounds * of fine dry flour, sifted as for cakes, and separ ate eight ounces of this from the remainder to make the leaven. Put it into a small pan, and mix it lightly into a lithe paste, wit.: half an ounce of yeast, and a spoonful or two of warm water ; make two or three slight incisions across the top, throw a cloth over the pan, and place it near the fire for about twenty minutes to rise. In the in- terval make a hollow space in the centre of the remainder of the * It should he remarked, that the directions for brioche-making are princips / derived from the French, and that the pound in their country weighs two ou es more than with us : this difference will account for the difficulty of work' iij in the number of eggs which they generally specify, and which render the p-Te too moist. 350 MODERN COOKERY® [chap. xvm. flour, and put into it half an ounce of salt, as mucn fine sifted sugar, and half a gill of cream, or a dessertspoonful of water ; add a pound of butter as free from moisture as it can be, and quite so from large grains of salt ; cut it into small bits, put it into the flour, and pour on it one by one six fresh eggs

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.