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Bread

Brioche : a Rich French Bread

A rich French bread made with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, yeast, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Brioche : a Rich French Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Warm the milk and mix it with sugar, yeast, and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Let it ferment for 1 hour.

  3. Add the eggs, salt, and rub the butter with flour.

  4. Knead into a smooth, firm dough.

  5. Let the dough prove for 2-3 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead again and divide into 2-ounce pieces.

  2. Shape into small loaves.

  3. Place on tins to rise.

  4. Before baking, wash the loaves with beaten egg.

  5. Bake until rich yellow in color.

  6. After baking, wash the loaves with beaten egg.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Add richness, structure and a golden colour to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives brioche its rich flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise.
All-purpose flour
Provides the gluten network that gives the dough structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.
Milk
Provides moisture and helps form a soft, tender dough.

The step that matters

Proving the dough. The dough must rise fully during the 2-3 hour proof. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse, since yeast gas and gluten strength must balance.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More brioche recipes

Dough 14Cakes 4Cake 3Fritters 3Rolls 3Cheese 3 See all 27 →

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