Brioche is one of the original enriched breads. Enriched meaning that it contains lots of butter and eggs. According to Wikipedia, there was mention of brioche in print as early as the 13th century, though it's believed to be the descendant of a type of Roman bread.
The that quote usually attributed to Marie Antoinette about letting the peasants eat cake, many people think it was actually mistranslated and refers to brioche. She was saying to let the peasants eat brioche. According to Peter Reinhart, in his Bread Bakers Apprentice, there was two versions of brioche during that time in France. One of them was for the rich, which was chock full of butter, and one was for the poor, which had minimal amounts of butter. There were apparently strict rules governing who could buy which version. By saying "let them eat brioche" Marie Antoinette was saying let the poor eat the rich person's version of the bread.
Brioche is an amazingly rich, soft, flaky, delicious bread. It's kind of strange in that it contains so much butter, but it still turns out bread-like. In fact, brioche can have anywhere from 50% to 90% butter (that would be half as much butter as flour to almost as much butter as flour by weight). The most traditional and recognizable form of brioche is the brioche à tête (pictured above), but you can shape it any way you want.
Brioche makes a great brunch bread just because it's so buttery and tasty. I recently found a great formula for strawberry almond brioche from Cyril Hitz, a very well known baker. You can check out my version after the jump.
Gallery: Apricot brioche
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