Let Them Eat Brioche! | A Guest Post by Leslie Carroll

Mention the name Marie Antoinette to many people and the first thing they might reply is “Oh, yeah, she’s the one who said ‘Let them eat cake,’ har-har.’” Uh—well, no. And I’m willing to venture out on a twig here to claim that historical fiction aficionados know perfectly well that Marie Antoinette never said any such thing in response to the information that the people of France were starving and had no bread. In fact she was always extremely philanthropic; and among the charitable largesse that she and her husband Louis XVI doled among the impoverished citizens were stores of grain and loaves of bread.

The phrase “Let them eat cake” predates Marie Antoinette’s birth by many decades. Historian Antonia Fraser who wrote the most recent biography of Marie Antoinette has posited that the sentence was uttered by Louis XIV’s Spanish-born wife, Maria Theresa, a rather cloistered queen who never learned to speak French terribly well and spent much of her time shut indoors playing cards with her attendants and her dwarves while the Sun King flitted about with the likes of Mesdames de Montespan and Maintenon. And Queen Maria Theresa never mentioned “cake” either,” if she said anything at all. The eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who gives us the phrase in his writings, can’t recall where he first heard it, but he remembers it as “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.” Let them eat brioche.

Why brioche? And in what context? That all depends on who really said it. What we do know is that the words never passed between Marie Antoinette’s lips, although a warm, flaky, buttery brioche, vaguely suggestive of a woman’s breast (is that where people came up with all those lesbian slanders against her?), might have done so. So it’s high time to set the historical record straight for those who didn’t know it, and to reclaim Marie Antoinette’s honor as a charitable soul. Eat brioche because you have a considerable amount of time on your hands to make it, not because you don’t have any other bread on hand!

Sit back with a steaming café au lait . . . and enjoy it!

This is the Basic Brioche recipe taken from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum), which merits 4 forks on Epicurious.com.

According to Ms. Beranbaum, “for those who desire even more butter, it can be increased to 6 ounces, which will also make the crumb finer, denser, and more cake-like. [In which case, well, yeah, let them eat cake!] This is actually a very easy dough to make, especially in a bread machine, which handles this small amount of dough perfectly.”

TIME SCHEDULE
Dough Starter (Sponge): minimum 1 1/2 hours, maximum 24 hours
Minimum Rising Time: 10 hours
Oven Temperature: 425°F (350°F for the loaf)
Baking Time: 10 to 15 minutes for small brioche, 35 to 40 minutes for the loaf
Yield: Makes 16 small brioche (or one 8 1/2-by-4 1/2-by-4 1/2-inch-high loaf)/17.5 ounces/500 grams

INGREDIENTS
Dough Starter (Sponge):
2 tblsp water, at room temperature (70° to 90°F):
1 tblsp sugar
¼ tsp instant yeast
½ cup unbleached all-purpose flour (use only Gold Medal, King Arthur, or Pillsbury)
1 large egg

Flour mixture:
1 cup plus 1 ½ tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour (use only Gold Medal, King Arthur, or Pillsbury)
2 tblsp sugar
1 ¼ tsp instant yeast
½ tsp salt
2 large eggs, cold
8 tablespoons (½ cup) very soft unsalted butter

Egg Glaze (if making a large loaf, glaze is optional):
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp cream or milk

PREPARATION
1. One day or up to 2 days ahead, make the dough. In the mixer bowl, place the water, sugar, instant yeast, flour, and egg. Whisk by hand until very smooth, to incorporate air, about 3 minutes. The sponge will be the consistency of a very thick batter. (At first the dough may collect inside the whisk, but just shake it out and keep whisking. If it’s too thick to whisk, it means you’ve added too much flour and will need to add a little of the eggs to be added Step 3.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl and set it aside, covered with plastic wrap.

2. Combine the ingredients for the flour mixture and add to the sponge. In a small bowl, whisk the flour with the sugar and yeast. Then whisk in the salt (this keeps the yeast from coming in contact with the salt, which would kill it). Sprinkle this mixture on top of the sponge. Cover it tightly with plastic wrap and let it stand for 1 1/2 to 2 hours at room temperature. (During this time, the sponge will bubble through the flour mixture in places; this is fine.)

3. Mix the dough. Add the 2 cold eggs and mix with the dough hook on low (#2 if using a KitchenAid) for about 1 minute or until the flour is moistened. Raise the speed to medium (#4 KitchenAid) and beat for 2 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl with an oiled spatula and continue beating for about 5 minutes longer or until the dough is smooth and shiny but very soft and sticky. It will mass around the dough hook but not pull away from the bowl completely.

Add the butter by the tablespoon, waiting until each addition is almost completely absorbed before adding the next tablespoon, beating until all the butter is incorporated. The dough will be very soft and elastic and will stick to your fingers unmercifully, but don’t be tempted to add more flour at this point; it will firm considerably after chilling. (The dough will weigh about 19 oz.)

4. Let the dough rise. Using an oiled spatula or dough scraper, scrape the dough into a 1-quart dough rising container or bowl, greased lightly with cooking spray or oil. Lightly spray or oil the top of the dough and cover the container with a lid or plastic wrap. With a piece of tape, mark the side of the container at approximately where double the height of the dough would be. Allow the dough to rise until doubled, 1 ½ to 2 hours.

5. Chill the dough. Refrigerate the dough for 1 hour to firm it; this will prevent the butter from separating.

Gently deflate the dough by stirring it with a rubber scraper or spatula, and return it to the refrigerator for another hour so that it will be less sticky and easier to handle.

6. Deflate the dough and allow it to rest, chilled. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and press or roll it into a rectangle, flouring the surface and dough as needed to keep it from sticking. The exact size of the rectangle is not important. Give the dough a business letter turn, brushing off any excess flour, and again press down or roll it out into a rectangle. Rotate it 90 degrees so that the closed side is facing to your left. Give it a second business letter turn and round the corners. Dust it lightly on all sides with flour. Wrap it loosely but securely in plastic wrap and then place it in a large zip-seal bag. Refrigerate for at least 6 hours or up to 2 days to allow the dough to ripen (develop flavor) and firm.

7. Shape the dough and let it rise. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and gently press it down to deflate it. Cut the dough into 16 pieces (a scant 1 ¼ oz. each). Without a scale, the easiest way to divide the dough evenly is to lightly flour your hands and roll it into a long cylinder. Cut it in half, then continue cutting each piece in half until there are 16 pieces.

Pinch off a little less than one-quarter of each piece, for the topknot. Roll each larger piece of dough into a ball and press it into a prepared brioche mold.* With lightly floured hands, shape each of the dough pieces reserved for the topknots into an elongated pear form. Using your index finger, make a hole in the center of each brioche, going almost to the bottom of the mold, and insert the elongated part of a topknot deeply into the hole. Cover the molds loosely with oiled plastic wrap and let rise (ideally at 75° to 80°F) until the edges of the dough reach the tops of the molds, about 1 hour.

8. Preheat the oven. Preheat the oven to 425°F 1 hour before baking. Have an oven shelf at the lower level and place a baking stone or baking sheet on it before preheating.

9. Glaze and bake the brioche. Lightly beat together the egg yolk and cream for the glaze. Brush the top of the brioche with the egg glaze, being careful not to drip any on the side of the pans, or it will impede rising. Allow it to dry for 5 minutes and then brush a second time with the glaze. Use greased scissors or a small sharp knife to make a 1/4-inch-deep cut all around the base of the topknot so it will rise to an attractive shape.
Set the molds on a baking sheet and place them on the hot stone or hot baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted under a topknot comes out clean (an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center will read about 190°F).

10. Cool the brioche. Remove the brioche from the oven and unmold them onto a wire rack. Turn top side up and allow them to cool until barely warm.

Note The small brioche can be reheated in a 350°F oven for 5 minutes.

ULTIMATE FULL FLAVOR VARIATION
For the best flavor development in Step 2, allow the sponge to ferment for 1 hour at room temperature, then refrigerate it for up to 24 hours.

POINTERS FOR SUCCESS
• In a superb article on brioche in Pleasures of Cooking, the cookbook author Paula Wolfert recommends melting and browning about one-fifth of the butter (2 tablespoons) for an extra rich, delicious flavor.
• On some mixers there may not be an adjustment to raise the bowl, and the dough hook may not work as well for this small amount of dough; if this is the case, use the paddle beater.
• If after unmolding a brioche loaf the sides are still pale in color, place the loaf directly on the oven rack and continue baking for about 5 minutes to brown the sides and make them firm to prevent collapse.
• If a deeper shine is desired, the brioche can be double-glazed by brushing with the glaze immediately after shaping and then a second time just before baking. This also serves to prevent the dough from drying out during rising.

This dough is exceptionally wet. Just enough extra flour is added to be able to handle it for shaping, resulting in a very light, soft bread. I do not use the food processor for this dough because it is so sticky that it is very difficult to remove from the bowl and blade; it also lifts up the blade when incorporating the butter.

Brioche molds: I looked online and they are sold through Amazon, at Williams-Sonoma, the FoodNetworkStore.com and several other sources. A search for “brioche molds” yields a host of purchase sources.

Source: Distilled from the Epicurious.com website which reprinted it from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum. Copyright (c) 2003 by Rose Levy Beranbaum. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/printerfriendly/Basic-Brioche-351237#ixzz1TarfBM21