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brioche help please

HelenRennie's picture
HelenRennie

brioche help please

I just baked Rose Beranbaum's brioche (from the Bread Bible) 3 times in a row and I keep having the same problem.  I am puzzled since this has never happened to me before, though I haven't baked brioche in over 5 years.

The bread puffs up a lot during baking, but collapses within minutes after being out of the oven.  At first I thought it was under baked (I pulled it out at 185F), so I made another batch and baked to 200F -- same problem.  I tried making a third batch and I've noticed something is really not right with the dough itself.  After mixing and rising for 1.5 hours at room temperature and chilling for 45 min, I tried to fold the dough instead of doing my usual punch down.  As I was folding, I noticed that it has no structure at all.  You can rip a piece off with no effort.  At this point the dough chilled slightly, but wasn't completely cold and stiff.  I tried kneading it by hand (had to add flour) and no matter how much I kneaded it, I could't develop any elasticity.  I thought I mixed it in the KitchenAid to death.  I used a paddle since this dough is so wet.  Mixed with no butter for 15 min scraping down the bowl 2 times.  It seemed very strong at this stage.  Added butter one piece at a time and then mixed for an additional 7 min after all the butter was absorbed. 

Any advice?

Les Nightingill's picture
Les Nightingill

My first guess is that the KA paddle is not really kneading the dough, just mixing it, so you're not getting the gluten developed at this point. I know you have said that the dough feels strong coming out of the KA, but the paddle doesn't seem like the right tool to me. What happens if you use the dough hook? Is it possible?

HelenRennie's picture
HelenRennie

Paddle might be a problem.  I've always done it with a dough hook, but then I read a comment in Rose's book that said that some mixers have a hard time doing a small amount of dough with a hook and it might be good to start with a paddle.  Then I saw Dorie Greenspan's recipe for tart tropezienne that does all the mixing with a paddle) and that's what I did last time.  Maybe my problem initially was underbaking, but then I created a new problem by using a paddle? 

prettedda's picture
prettedda

I agree with using the dough hook. I gave up trying any breads with a paddle. How do you add the ingrediants. For brioche I make sure it is quite strong before adding sugar then add sugar slowly and make sure the gluten is completely developed before slowly adding in room temp butter.

Other possibility would be over-proofing although brioche seems tolerant to over-proofing for me.

penguinpants's picture
penguinpants

Perhaps start with the KA paddle and then switch to your hook after the ingredients are well incorporated. The only brioche I've tried was a no-knead recipe from America's Test Kitchen, with really good results. https://www.americastestkitchen.com/clips/recipes/14

HelenRennie's picture
HelenRennie

Have another brioche question.  Everyone seems to agree that you have to develop gluten fully before adding butter, but the recipes I've seen are all over the place about how much to knead after the butter is integrated.  Some say as long as 15 min.  Some say just to knead until the dough comes together.  What exactly happens during this time?  Didn't we develop all the gluten we need before adding butter?

breadforfun's picture
breadforfun

Hi Helen,

I have no real first hand experience with brioche, but it is something that I have wanted to learn so your questions piqued my curiosity.  You probably have done all the research already, but I looked through some books and found a couple of references that may be useful:

in Baking with Julia, Julia Child says that brioche dough needs a lot of kneading (as others have already said).  She suggests times of 15 minutes in a stand mixer before the butter is added while mixing at a lower speed.  She also says that when incorporating the butter, it needs to be made the same consistency as the dough by "bashing the butter into submission with a rolling pin" (can't you just hear her voice saying this?).  The butter will make the dough fall apart but it will come back together in about 5 minutes at medium speed.  But since you did most of these things already, have you recently changed flour brands or types that could affect the dough quality? Also, I wonder if mixing 7 minutes after butter was incorporated might be too long, breaking down whatever gluten network you had already formed.

Dan DiMuzio, in his book Bread Baking, says of enriched doughs in general that the fat serves to coat and shorten the gluten strands (thus the term "shortening"), and it interferes with the bonding of gluten strands, specifically glutenin to gliadin, reducing dough strength and increasing tenderness. But, he adds, that adding the fat after gluten development makes the effect much less destabilizing to the gluten network yielding a crumb that is less dense and cake-like.

Hopefully this helps out.

-Brad

P.S. I enjoy reading your blog and have learned a lot from it.

HelenRennie's picture
HelenRennie

Dear bakers,

Thank you so much for all your comments.  Thanks to your help I finally baked perfect brioche.  I will try to write it up on my blog in detail, but here is the gist.  

  • Paddle in a KA was a terrible idea.  It needs to be a hook.  
  • Simply spinning the dough around doesn't necessarily knead evenly, so every 2-3 minutes, I stopped the mixer and flipped the dough with a wet hand.  
  • After a long mixer kneading, I kneaded by hand for 1 min right before adding the butter and before the first rise.  
  • After the butter is added, the dough needs lots of kneading again.  Some recipes didn't explicitly say that.  
  • If the house is at 65F, there is no hope in this dough rising on its own.  For all the rises (especially the proof), I put it into a turned off oven with a skillet of boiling water on the floor of the oven and I had to re-heat the water every 1-2 hours.  Even with all that, the rising times are way longer than all the recipes suggested.  First rise about 4 hours and proof about 3 hours.
  • It's very important to knead out all the bubbles before shaping.  Ciril Hiltz shaping video really helped.  I also made sure to knead the bubbles out after the first rise is finished and the dough is partially chilled.
  • Baking temperature and strategy probably depends on the oven, but 375F on a stone that most recipes suggested resulted in burnt brioche in my oven.  What finally worked for me was 350F, not using a stone, baking in the middle of the oven and insulating the bottom of the baking sheet with another baking sheet (King Arthur suggestion).
  • I live and die by instant read thermometers when it comes to meat, but here they didn't seem to be too reliable.  My brioche (shaped like burger buns) read 203F, but baking it to any lower temperature seemed to cause collapse.  It didn't taste overbaked at all.  I tried baking for an additional couple of minutes to see if the temperature would change much, but it didn't.  Is it possible that the crumb is so airy that the thermometer is not reliable?