Bread Baker's Apprentice #4-Brioche

The first time I made brioche I had very little experience with yeast doughs and the brioche was to be used as a tart crust. The brioche crust just didn't do it for me, I prefer pate sucree in my tarts, so I ended up forgetting about brioche for a while. This changed when I had to come up with some breakfast pastries in the second restaurant I worked at. Sticky buns and brioche a tete were given a second change and my customers loved them!

Since then I have made brioche numerous times at work and at home, and it never fails to put a smile on my face. Not only the dough is super shiny and a pleasure to touch (may I dare to call it sexy?), but the taste of a freshly baked brioche never fails to put me in a good mood. Food has that power on me, I don't need any other stimulants, give me something delicious to eat and my neurons are bathed in serotonin.

If you have been following some of my posts, you must know about this challenge started by Nicole at pinch my salt. We are baking from Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice, cover to cover.

The fourth recipe in Peter Reinhart's book is brioche. As usual, Peter gives a nice introductory overview on brioche (who knew that Queen Marie Antoinette probably uttered "let's them eat brioche" and not "bread" before being be-headed.), then he writes three versions of this wonderful recipe: a Rich man, a Middle-class, and a Poor man version, so called depending on the amount of butter and eggs in the recipe. Since I had tried another of his recipes for a yeast dough with the rich man equivalent of butter and found it too buttery, I decided to go with the middle class version, which is very buttery as it is.

I was a little puzzled when I read that in the instructions the butter is added almost immediately. Normally the dough is mixed for few minutes to allow some gluten development before adding the butter, which coats the flour in fat and may hinder the gluten development if added too soon. Because I am stubborn, I decided to do it the traditional way and mixed the dough until it looked even, and it had some structure. I actually had to add some milk as the dough was too stiff (you want the dough to stick to the mixer bowl somewhat and it has to feel soft, somewhat sticky). Butter was then added slowly and the resulting dough was text-perfect for brioche. I left it in the fridge overnight and then made 8 mini brioche a tete, and a cinnamon bread monkey-bread style, just because I love playing with food and my family is addicted to cinnamon bread.

Before proofing

After proofing

I keep forgetting how much brioche rises and even more about the amazing oven spring. When the baked brioche comes out of the oven I get this it is alive! type of thought.

Fully proofed

Wonderful crumb

I was really happy with the wonderful results, a nice recipe indeed. I got a "this is the best brioche you ever made" comment, so here, go buy the book if you haven't already.

Happy Baking!

Bread Baker's Apprentice #3-Bagels

This is the third week of the challenge started by Nicole at Pinch my salt. We are baking through Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice. We are going in alphabetical order because that is how the recipes are organized, and we are not publishing the recipes not to break any copyright laws. This book is a treasure of information, techniques, and stories on the different breads so if you are into bread or would like to start somewhere this is a great book to start The amazingly prolific Peter Reinhart is coming out with another book this fall and I am looking forward to buying it.

This recipe was so much fun to make! I was totally intimidated before trying it, as bagels were not in my list of things that I wanted to try in the near future but I am sooo glad I joined this challenge, I needed a little push, and boy, was it worth it. I don't know why I was so scared, bagels are not that complicated.

Peter Reinhart is the guru of bread, his books are so informative, and the recipes very well written, they just make themselves if you follow the directions AND read the opening chapters. This recipe was no different, straight forward, very detailed, and so tasty. What I love about the Bread Baker's Apprentice is the amount of information on each bread and the detailed instructions on how to make each recipe. Thank you Peter for another keeper recipe.

The recipe starts with a sponge left to rise for 2 hours. When the sponge is ready the rest of the ingredients are added, including malt, a critical ingredients in making bagels, which in the active or diastatic form improves the taste of bagel by enzymatically releasing "flavors trapped in the flour". Peter gives suggestions on what to use if you cannot find malt, so nothing is lost, maybe depth of flavor. According to BBA, uncooked powdered malt is the first choice, but since I already had malt syrup I didn't bother buying more ingredients or trying to find powdered malt. The jar doesn't say whether the malt syrup was cooked or not, but by the deep brown color I suspect it was.

PR highly recommends using high gluten flour for the best texture, but again, I was lazy and used the bread flour I already had. I will try them again with HGF I can buy in bulk at a local store.

The dough is much stiffer than regular bread and took a while to pass the windowpane test and had to be hand kneaded for a while. The dough is portioned and rolled immediately. After 20 minutes the little balls are shaped either by making a hole in the center of by rolling into ropes and then sealing the ends. I shaped them by making a hole in the center and it worked out really well.

The next step was what took the most because my house was cold. The shaped pieces are left to rise 20 minutes and tested in water to see whether they float (which correlates to the yeast having been activated and making CO2). Mine took at least 45 minutes and I ended up putting the trays in the sun for few minutes because I had to leave the house!

The bagels are retarded in the fridge overnight, which works great to improve the flavor and you can have fresh bagels he next morning. The boiling and baking were straightforward except that the bagels took longer to bake than the book said.

The end product was really flavorful, beautiful to look at, and worth the effort. Next time I will try to boil them less as they were a little chewy, and boiling too long is probably the culprit according to BBA.

The Bread Baker's Apprentice #2-Artos Bread

I am a day late for this but here is the second bread this group have tried. The recipe is part of a family of breads used in Greece to celebrate various festivities. Artos is the general name for Greek celebration breads, but there are many variations with different names, twists and turns. Nuts, dried fruit, and coins are also added depending on what event is celebrated. The book gives three variations of this bread, one being the bread Christopsomos, baked at Christmas time, which is a beautiful variation with a piece of dough added on top to resemble the cross. I wanted to try this but run out of time, so I only tried the simpler version of Artos bread, made with a starter, and with the addition of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and all spice.

The bread is partially leavened with a barm or a poolish. I decided to use my sourdough starter since it works so well and has the same consistency of the barm from this book. As I normally do with any recipe, I first made the recipe as was written to try substitutions later. The bread was straightforward, and it performed how described in the recipe. I used the stretch and fold method to develop more gluten since I never get to the window pane test in my kitchenaid mixer. How I wish I had the money to buy a stronger mixer to make bread.....

After the first proofing, I divided the dough in two since it was way too big in my opinion. I shaped the two parts into a boule and let is rise a second time. Baking was at 350F without misting the oven, or scoring the top. The final bread looked great and I glazed it with a mixture of water, sugar and honey like Reinhart suggests, and topped it with sesame seeds.

I have to be honest, here...the execution of the bread was easy and I visually liked the final product, but the taste didn't do for me. There was a contrast between the sweet top and the less sweet crumb. I think that the addition of nuts and dried fruit will improve the taste quite a bit, so I will try it again, adding lots of dry fruit next time. I also didn't care too much for all the spices, maybe I will skip the clove, which tasted predominant, and add more of the other spices, or even some anice seeds to go with dry cherries.

Bagels are next, can't wait!

Bread Baker's Apprentice #1-Anadama Bread

I recently got bitten by the bread baking bug, or BBB, and I can't stop. For it I actually have to thank for the zillionth time my mentor, pastry chef extraordinaire, DMG. Chef D. has worked for Nancy Silverton, of all people, and I have learned tons from him. Before working with DMG my attempts at bread were really pitiful, and I almost gave up, thinking that breads made at home will never come close to what professional bakers are able to create. Since working alongside chef D. I acquired not only knowledge, but three great bread baking books and have tried successfully many recipes at home.

My last crazy idea was to join the newly formed BBA group, started by Nicole, the creator of Pinch my salt (love the name BTW). We will bake our way through the book The Bread Baker's Apprentice, one recipe per week. It is a totally insane commitment, but I love Peter Reinhart, I love The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and without this challenge I wouldn't possibly bake all the recipes in it.

The first bread we baked was the Anadama bread. In Peter's words this bread takes its name from the words that a hungry husband muttered when he realized that his wife had not only left him but departed leaving behind only a pot of cornmeal mush and some molasses. He muttered the words "Anna, damn 'her", mixed the mush and the molasses with some flour and yeast and this great bread was born.

I didn't know what to expect, but loved this recipe. It behaved exactly how described, it was easy to make, the dough was super soft and pleasant to work with, and the bread was really tasty. The molasses gives the bread not only a beautiful color and flavor, but it makes for an incredible soft crumb. It is not a bread for butter and jam, but rather for butter and prosciutto, or mayo and tomatoes. Really tasty!

Now onto the next challenge.....