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!