where does cottage loaf originate from?

Question

need to know country and city

Answer 1

You plonker! It's a home made loaf, made in a cottage from times gone by. Cottages back then were stuck in the middle of nowhere, so your country and city question is impossible to answer! Can you imagine the old dear who originally made the bread recipe. She'd've been kneading the dough on her wooden table in the middle of her two room cottage, and instead of making a flat dough, she piled it up, stuck a bit of left over dough on top and shoved it in her bread oven. She probably wouldn't even have been able to write, let alone record in her non-existant diary that she'd suddenly invented the thing! Passing the recipe would've been from generation to generation (word of mouth, no written records).

Answer 2

Food historians tell us the composition of brioche (cottage loaf) has evolved over time. The brioche referenced by Marie Antoinette in her famous "Let them eat cake" phrase ("Qu'ils manget de la brioche") was probably not the same light, flaky roll we enjoy today.

"Brioches originated as soft and light white loaves, enriched with butter and eggs, much much less so than those we know today. They were baked without moulds. Looking at Chardin's beautiful paintings of brioches you can see that he has quite clearly defined the notches round the base of his cottage-loaf-shaped confections, which are handsome and tall but not tidy like a moulded cake. So I think that in the eighteenth century, and at the time of that poor, foolish Marie Antoinette is supposed to have said, when told that the people of Paris were rioting for bread, qu'ils manget de al brioche', the composition of the cake must have been simply that of an enriched bread much like that of our own Bath buns and Sally Lunns, so made at that period without benefit of moulds or tins, although paper bands were sometimes wrapped round them for baking. Certainly it would not be possible to bake today's liquid brioche mixture or crust for a fillet of beef or a large sausage then the brioche mixture is made with fewer eggs and less butter, or it would be impossible to handle."

Answer 3

A cottage