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Brioche Paste

A yeast-based dough for brioche, made with eggs, flour, butter, sugar, salt, and fresh yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Brioche Paste

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brioche Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yeast

  1. Prepare yeast by mixing fresh yeast with water; let it sit for 1 hour, then pour off the water and use the sediment.

  2. Mix 1 dessert spoonful of yeast with a little hot water and ¼ of the flour to make yeast paste; cover and let it rise for 15 minutes.

Make the dough

  1. Make a well in the remaining flour, add salt and sugar, then add butter in small pieces and break in the eggs.

  2. Mix everything well and knead thoroughly.

  3. Spread the dough thinly, pour the yeast paste over it, and knead again twice.

Rise

  1. Place the dough in a sieve or pan lined with a towel, sprinkle with flour, and cover.

  2. Let it rise in a cool place in summer or a warm place in winter; it's best made a day in advance.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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 moisture, setting the crumb as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, soft crumb.
Very dry flour
Provides the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and elasticity.
Fresh yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.

The step that matters

Knead the dough thoroughly. Thorough kneading develops the gluten network that traps the gas from the yeast. Without it the enriched dough, heavy with butter and eggs, will not rise well or hold its shape.

“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.

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