Brioche - History

History

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. 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 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 "pâté à tarte briochée", "a pain à brioche pauvre . . . 3 eggs and 250 grams of butter for 1 kilogram of flour" was introduced. Notably, the oldest complete recipe that survives is entitled : "CHAPITRE II. Paint bénit, & brioches." It begins with a lighter, cheaper version of blessed bread, calling for "a pound of fresh butter and a soft cheese 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" 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 bénit' and 'brioche' were sometimes used together or virtually interchangeably; so, for example, in another 17th century recipe entitled : "CHAPITRE II. Paint bénit, & brioches." It begins with a lighter, cheaper version of blessed bread, calling for "a pound of fresh butter and a soft cheese 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 to the cheaper pain briochée with a ratio of 4:1 existed at the same time.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his autobiography 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 inaccurately translated as "Let them eat cake". This saying is commonly mis-attributed to Queen Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI. In the contemporaneous "Encyclopédie" 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"