Brioche
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Brioche is a light but rich French bread made with a yeast dough and eggs, milk, butter and sugar. The crust is glazed before baking and turns a deep golden brown. The crumb is delicate and pale yellow in colour. In Paris, it is traditionally baked in a fluted tin with a smaller ball of dough placed on top, either as buns or as one large loaf, but other shapes and preparations can be traditional in different parts of France. It is also served in a ring-shaped and hexagonal loaves. One common variation is to add raisins to the bread.
The word brioche first appeared in print in 1404, and this bread is believed to have sprung from a traditional Norman recipe. It is often served as a pastry or as the basis of a dessert, with many local variations in added ingredients, fillings and toppings. It is also used with savoury preparations, particularly with foie gras, and is used in some meat dishes.
The famous phrase, wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette, "let them eat cake" as callous advice to starving peasants before the French Revolution was mis-translated into English. The original French, first written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Confessions, was "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" - "let them eat brioche".
The pronunciation in French is (using the International Phonetic Alphabet) . The pronunciation in Received Pronunciation is chiefly , and the pronunciation in American English is .