Traditionally, the brioche is a pastry made from a leavened, light and puffy dough, made from a mixture of flour, yeast, water or milk, sugar and salt, eggs and butter. It can be molded in different ways (head brioche, Nanterre brioche, mousseline brioche) and embellished with other elements (pralines, dried or candied fruit, cottage cheese, cream, etc.). Even if the recipe seems simple, it is a complicated product where you have to strictly respect the rising and cooking times. If the brioche is eaten for breakfast, dessert or snack, it also exists in a savory version or as an accompaniment to certain dishes.
If we find the beginnings of this viennoiserie as early as ancient Greece, the brioche as we know it today, light and delicate, appeared in the 19th century.e century during the democratization of butter and eggs in pastry preparations. It is one of the most common regional pastries in France: the fallue de Normandie, the brioche de Saint-Genix, the brioche of the Vendée bride, the brioche vosgienne (quegnet for the sweet, cholande for the salty) , Aveyronnaise fouace, Flemish ceramics, Béarnais pastis, Corsican campanile, Dunkirk koeckbotteram, etc.
After tasting and rating more than fifty different brioches over several weeks and according to different criteria (visual, puff pastry, taste and quality-quantity-price ratio), here is our list, in no particular order, for the year 2022.
XXL Vendée brioche from the Michalak bakery
If Christophe Michalak is recognized today as one of the most emblematic pastry chefs of his generation, we too often forget that he began his bakery apprenticeship at the age of 15. In September 2021, he opened a neighborhood bakery, Kopain, “no frills, no blah-blah”with simple, rustic and gourmet products.
Our opinion : Biting deeply into a slice of Christophe Michalak’s ultra-soft Vendée brioche is a simple pleasure to be repeated as often as possible. There are only good things inside: flour, natural sourdough, PDO butter, fleur de sel from Camargue, orange blossom from Lebanon, but also a touch of pastis and rum. One of the great favorites of this selection.
Paris. Price: €22 per kilo.
Christophe Cressent’s white chocolate brioche
After a career combining training, research and development in milling, Christophe Cressent opened his first point of sale in 2010 with one main idea: to sell only what he makes. To do this, he uses a selection of rigorously sourced raw materials (organic flour from the French tradition, free-range eggs or grand cru and origin chocolates) served by an expertise that has enabled him to obtain the envied title of Best French bakery worker at the age of 33.
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