This time we are speaking about brioche: it’s a delicious horn-shaped sweet, with which we often interface with delight at breakfast, made of flaky pastry stuffed with cream, marmalade and whatever bakers decide to put in.

We couldn’t know that this tasty creation has a really charming history behind it, that we are telling you now.

For a lot of centuries the Turkish Empire tried to invade the Italian and European territories and it went so far as to besiege also Vienna in 1683 (and it wasn’t the first time). The siege of Vienna went on for two months and the Turkish did all they could, also boring some tunnels to attack the town from the underground.

At this point of the story a new group of “heroes” came into play: the bakers of Vienna, while were kneading, heard some suspicious noises and foiled the night Turkish attack, giving the alarm.

The Turkish were finally driven out by King John of Poland who, enthusiastic about the heroic action of the bakers, asked them to create a sweet to remind the victory over the Turkish.
So, Vendler, a Viennese baker, made the brioche and drew inspiration from the Crescent, the symbol of the Turkish Empire, in order to give shape to the sweet.

The brioche, however, was too good to be confined in Vienna and soon crossed the border into France with the new name of croissant. One of its greatest admirers took it there: the Viennese Mary Antoinette of Austria, daughter of the empress Mary Theresa, who, marrying Louis XVI, would be become queen of France in 1774.

This accounts also for the derivation of the word “croissant”, that derives from French and means “crescent”, that is crescent moon.
So, look in a different way on brioches that are “regular visitors” at your breakfast: they carry a unique and unrepeatable piece of history with them!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 8:43 am and is filed under italian cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.