300 grams (about 10 -1/2 ounces) Hungarian [very fine] flour
150 grams (about 5-1/4 ounces) butter, cut into small pieces
30 grams (about 1 ounce) brewer's yeast
20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce)sugar
5 grams (about 1/5 of an ounce) salt
6 eggs

Egg wash
Egg yolk

Equipment needed
Twenty small tin molds greased with melted butter or lard, dusted with flour mixed with icing sugar

Original Italian text
Farina d'Ungheria, grammi 300
Burro, grammi 150
Lievito di birra, grammi 30
zucchero, grammi 20
Sale, grammi 5
Uova, N.6

Mix in the yeast in warm water and then add a quarter of the flour.

Work into a dough, kneading until it is the right consistency, and then shape the dough into a round loaf.

Score a cross on the top of the loaf; place in a small pan whose bottom has been dusted with flour, and allow the dough to rise in a warm room.



Take the rest of the flour, make a well in the middle, and put the sugar, salt and an egg in it.

Using your fingers, mix all of this together and then add the butter which has been cut into small pieces.

Work the dough, placing it in a bowl to make it easier.

When the small loaf that is resting has doubled in volume, add it to the larger dough in the bowl and knead them together.

Add the remaining eggs one at a time.

Then put the bowl in a warm draft free place, and when the dough has risen, divide it into pieces big enough fill twenty small tin molds halfway to the top.

Before filling the molds, grease them with melted butter or lard and dust with flour mixed with icing sugar.

Let the dough rise again, brush with egg yolk, and bake in the oven.



Original Italian text

Stemperate il lievito di birra con acqua tiepida nel la quarta parte della detta farina; formatene un panino rotondo di giusta consistenza, fategli un taglio in croce e ponetelo a lievitare in luogo tiepido entro a una cazzarolina con un velo di farina sotto.

Alla farina che resta fateci una buca in mezzo, poneteci lo zuchero, il sale e un uovo, e con le dita assimilate insieme queste tre cose, poi aggiungete il burma servendovi della lama di un coltello e poi della tinella per lavorarlo meglio.

Unite a questo il panino lievitato, quando sara cresciuto del dopio, e serventre uova una alla volta.

Poi la catinella ponetela in luogo tiepido e ben chiuso, e quando l'impasto sera lievitato disfatelo alquanto e con esso riempite a meta una ventina di stampini di latta rigati, che avanti avrete unti con burro liquido o lardo e spolverizzati con farina mista a zucchero a velo.

Rimetteteli a lievitare, poi dorateli e cuoceteli al forno o al forno da campagna.

The recipe in this entry was taken from "La Scienza in Cucina e L'Arte di Mangiar Bene manuale Pratico per le Famiglie" compilato da Pellegrino Artusi. The book was first published in 1891. Since then many Italian editions have been published. Olga Ragusa's selection of recipes from Pellegrino Artusi's famous cookbook, titled "The Italian Cook Book," can be found in its entirety at www.archive.org (It's free). The University of Toronto recently published a new English edition of Pellegrino Artusi's "Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well"; many of the recipes in this edition can be found at www.books.google.ca.... The following text is from Wikipedia: Brioche (/ˈbrioʊʃ/ or /ˈbriɒʃ/; French: [bʁi.ɔʃ]) is a pastry akin to a highly enriched bread of French origin, whose high egg and butter content give it a rich and tender crumb. It is "light and slightly puffy, more or less fine, according to the proportion of butter and eggs" It has a dark, golden, and flaky crust, frequently accentuated by an egg wash applied after proofing. Brioche is considered a Viennoiserie. It is made in the same basic way as bread, but has the richer aspect of a pastry because of the extra addition of eggs, butter, liquid (milk, water, cream, and, sometimes, brandy) and occasionally a bit of sugar. Brioche, along with pain au lait and pain aux raisins — which are commonly eaten at breakfast or as a snack — form a leavened subgroup of Viennoiserie. Brioche is often cooked with fruit or chocolate chips and served as a pastry or as the basis of a dessert with many local variations in added ingredients, fillings or toppings. "Brioche is eaten with dessert or tea, but also has numerous uses in cuisine. Common brioche dough is suitable for coulibiac and fillet of beef en croute. Brioche mousseline surrounds foie gras, sausage, cervelat lyonnais; . . . individual brioches serve as containers for various chopped and sauced stuffings, savoury or sweet, as warm appetizers or intermediate courses." Brioche Ă  tĂŞte or parisienne is perhaps the most classically recognized form: it is formed and baked in a fluted round, flared tin; a large ball of dough is placed on the bottom and topped with a smaller ball of dough to form the head (tĂŞte). Brioche Nanterre is a loaf of brioche made in a standard loaf pan. Instead of shaping two pieces of dough and baking them together, two rows of small pieces of dough are placed in the pan. Loaves are then proofed (allowed to rise) in the pan, fusing the pieces together. During the baking process the balls of dough rise further and form an attractive pattern. Brioche des Rois (served around Epiphany, esp. in Provence) Brioche can also be made in a pan without being rolled into balls to make an ordinary loaf.Brioche dough contains flour, eggs, butter, liquid (milk, water, cream, and sometimes brandy), leavening (yeast or sourdough), salt, and sometimes sugar. Common recipes have a flour to butter ratio of about 2:1. The normal method is to make the dough, let it rise to double its volume at room temperature and then punch it down and let it rise again in the refrigerator for varying periods (according to the recipe), retarding the dough to develop the flavor. Refrigeration also stiffens the dough, which still rises, albeit slowly, making it easier to form. The dough is then shaped, placed in containers for the final rise (proof), and the tops are generally brushed with an egg wash just before baking to give the top a burnished sheen during baking, and then baked at 230 °C (446 °F) until the crust browns (Maillard reaction) and the interior is done (reaches at least 90 °C). The first rise time for small rolls is 1 to 1½ hours, for larger brioche the time is lengthened until the loaves double. History Still life with brioche, Jean-Baptiste SimĂ©on Chardin, 1763 The first recorded use of the word in French dates from 1404. It is attested in 1611 in Cotgrave's A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, where it is described as "a rowle, or bunne, of spiced bread" and its origin given as Norman.[6] A similar type of bread, called tsoureki (τσουρέκι), is also traditionally baked in Greece for the Easter weekend.In France it developed as "a sort of bread improved since antiquity by generations of bakers, then of pastry-makers . . . with some butter, some eggs, sugar coming later . . . it developed from the blessed bread [pain bĂ©nit] of the church which gradually became of better quality, more and more costly, less and less bread; until becoming savoury brioche". In the 17th century "pâtĂ© Ă  tarte briochĂ©e", "a pain Ă  brioche pauvre . . . [using only] 3 eggs and 250 grams of butter for 1 kilogram of flour" was introduced. However, sourdough and brewer's yeast preparations would both remain common well into the next century, with "blessed bread . . . more and more often replaced by brioche" in the 18th century, where, "Those from Gisors and Gournay, great butter markets, were the most highly regarded." For the wealthy "from the time of Louis XIV onwards . . . Butter, in widespread use at least in the northern half of France, was the secret of making brioches". "In Gisors, on market days, they produce up to 250 or 300 kg of brioches. The dough is made the evening before (1 kg of farine, a quarter of which for the starter, 10 g of yeast, 7 or 8 eggs; one mixes this together with the starter and 800 g of butter, breaking up the dough, which 'uses up the butter'. The dough is kept in a terrine, and one puts it in a mold just at the moment of baking. Thus prepared, the brioche remains light, keeps well, maintains the flavour of butter, without the stench of the starter. The terms "pain bĂ©nit" and "brioche" were sometimes used together or virtually interchangeably; so, for example, another 17th century recipe entitled "Paint bĂ©nit, & brioches" begins with a lighter, cheaper version of blessed bread, calling for "a pound of fresh butter and a soft cheese [but no eggs!] for a pail of flour; and goes on to describe "the more delicate that we call Cousin", which uses 3 pounds of butter, 2 cheeses, and a royal pint of eggs for the same amount of flour, as well "some good milk" if "the dough is too firm".So brioche of varying degrees of richness from the rich man's with a flour to butter ratio of 3:2[14] to the cheaper pain briochĂ©e with a ratio of 4:1 existed at the same time. Rousseau's Confessions (published posthumously in 1782, but completed in 1769), relates that "a great princess" is said to have advised, with regard to peasants who had no bread, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche", commonly rendered as "Let them eat cake"; this expression is frequently misattributed to Queen Marie-Antoinette.[15] In the contemporaneous "EncyclopĂ©die" it says: "the taste for luxury and onerous magnificence of much of the world, having slipped into religious practice, the usage was introduced in large cities of giving in place of bread, some more or less delicate cake . . . one would not believe what it costs the nation every year for this article alone. We know that there are more than 40,000 parishes in the kingdom where they distribute blessed bread". Etymology Although there has been much debate about the etymology of the word and, thus, the recipe's origins,[citation needed] it is now widely accepted that it is derived from the Old French verb "brier", 'a Norman dialectical form of "broyer", to work the dough with a "broye" or "brie" (a sort of wooden roller for kneading); the suffix"-oche" is a generic deverbal suffix. "Pain briĂ©" is a Norman bread whose dense dough was formerly worked with this instrument'. The root—bhreg—is of Germanic origin..... Photo: Mary Melfi.

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