Brioche

I’ve never made brioche before. I only ever became aware of it from reading a book by Alton Brown. More recently, I was speaking with a hockey-Mom who bakes her own bread like myself and she spoke very highly of brioche. The Wife was so impressed that she started pushing me to bake a loaf, going so far as to dig up a couple of recipes on the web. I finally relented this passed weekend.

I don’t know if there is a classic brioche recipe out there. But the defining characteristics of a loaf are a dark, dark brown crust that is soft, an even crumb, a little bit of sweetness to the taste and a very soft texture. It’s like eating a pillow- without the feathers … or polyester.

Following is a recipe that I came up with based on the ones the Wife provided.

The ingredients:

• 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup water
• 4 large eggs
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp yeast

I started by putting all the flour in our mixer’s bowl along with the yeast. Then I combined the water, eggs, honey and salt in a separate bowl and poured this into the flour-yeast combination and started the mixed at a low setting. While it was coming together in the mixer, I cut all the butter up into chunks.

Once the majority of the flour had been absorbed I began adding the butter. This step is actually a little trickier than I realized, thought I think the mixer provides a margin of error. The butter has to be added in solid form, so it needs to be added quickly. But if added to quickly, the butter will grease the sides of the bowl making the kneading and further butter absorption difficult. In retrospect, I think I would start adding the butter while there was still unabsorbed flour in the bowl to avoid any of these problems. Something to consider.

Anyway, as it worked out I didn’t run into any problems and I soon had a very loose, soft dough. As the butter worked it’s way into the dough more, I kicked up the mixer speed eventually all the way to it’s highest setting. I wanted the dough to come together and clear the sides of the bowl. The kneading takes too long on the lower speeds. As it was, it still took nearly 15 minutes to develop the dough properly. But clear the sides it did and it would even hold together at the lower speeds.

I stopped the knead process when the dough had attained a high gloss and was extremely soft and plastic. Don’t touch the dough as it’s a trap- you’ll be scraping dough off your fingers for days. I greased a 1 gallon jar with olive oil; scraped the dough into it; made sure to get the dough coated with oil by moving it around the jar with a spatula and then set it aside, covered, to rise for about an hour or so.

After the hour, I moved the jar into our refrigerator. The recipes the Wife had given me were unanimous on this move. For one, it retards the yeast; thus, improving flavor. But it also helps to firm up all of the butter making the dough easier to shape when the time comes.

For me, that time came the following morning. I took the dough, quickly performed a bill-fold to stimulate the yeast, and the rolled it into a 15″ log. I cut that log into 3 shorter logs of 5″ a piece. Then I rolled the each of those pieces out into 15″ sticks and then brought them all back together by braiding them. It actually looked kinda nice.

I allowed the shaped loaf to proof on a baking sheet, covered with plastic wrap, for about 2 hours. Then I placed it into a 400 degree oven. After about 20 mintues I reduced the heat to 350 because the loaf will brown very quickly because of all the butter, but the inside will not be done. In all, it took about 45 minutes to finish baking. I’ll need to dial that in a little more accurately- ultimately, I determined doneness by measuring the interior temperature at 190 degrees.

The verdict?

It’s very good. At first, I thought it would be like sweet bread. But it’s not nearly as sweet and the texture is much, much softer. The crust is not hard either- a bread knife cuts through it like, well, a hot knife through butter. The boy was concerned about it because it was so dark, but when given a slice he quickly realized it was a different sort of beast altogether. Given that it’s not a terribly difficult dough to make, I think it’s a keeper. So far, it’s been good with jelly and peanut butter.

I haven’t tried it with just butter though. Seems like it would be overkill.