Brioche

When I saw Txfarmer’s post with a sea-star pattern pumpkin challah, I knew I wanted to give it a try (thank you for the inspiration!).

Since I was responsible to bring bread to the Thanksgiving dinner we were invited to, I thought this would be a beautiful addition to the table. I also followed Txfarmer’s lead when it came to the recipe and used Maggie Glezer's "A Blessing of Bread” pumpkin challah one. I have never made challah before, but often bake Zopf and brioches, and the dough consistency is very similar.

The shape comes from Hamelman’s “Bread” (p. 314-316): you have to make several six-strand braids which are then intertwined. It really wasn’t all that hard since the directions and pictures were very clear. However, I definitely needed to concentrate when I did the braiding and consequently had to shoo everyone out of the kitchen. :)

It was a fun project and I really enjoyed it! And on top of everything it tasted really good. The deep yellow color from the pumpkin was also wonderful.

 I hadn’t really paid much attention to chapter 9 in “Bread” before this project. The entire chapter is dedicated to different braiding techniques. I wanted to try a few more so yesterday, with the rest of the pumpkin puree, I made my regular Zopf recipe and substituted some of the liquid with the pumpkin. I just love the color this gives and the taste is really good as well.

For this loaf I followed the Winston Knot technique (p. 306), without bringing the ends together at the end. One basically braids with 12 strands, but in groups of 3. I gave this to my neighbor to thank him for cutting my pizza stone a few days ago. For some reason I had two pizza stones, but of course could fit only one into my oven. I bake all my round loaves on this, but could never fit long baguettes on it (thus they were baked on sheet pans). I hadn’t bought a bigger baking stone, because they are all quite a bit thicker than a regular pizza stone and thus need to be pre-heated much longer. I love that the pizza stone basically provides the same effect, but because of its relative thinness, doesn’t need to be heated up so long.

My ‘can-do-it-all’ neighbor cut my second stone perfectly to complement my first one, using the surface in the oven to the maximum. I LOVE it!

This is the very easy two-strand braid, coiled up into a rosette shape (p. 297).

Mmm, those torn-away strands are so good with butter.

And finally my regular four-strand braid.
I was on the phone when these loaves were in the oven and forgot to cover them with aluminum foil after about 20 minutes (something I usually do), thus they got just a tad too dark.

I don't think I am done with pumpkin in my breads yet...

Before today I'd never tasted nor baked Brioche. Yesterday I began by making the dough,  and today I made two tries baking it.

First Try

The crumb, and flavor, seem to be what I should expect, from this dough, so for a first time, ever, I'm pleased, especially after reading all the cautions--offered by the author, and elsewhere--about making high fat percentage doughs; but as you can see I have a long way to go learning to construct these rascals correctly. I've nicknamed the one in the upper left corner Nearly Headless Nick (Harry Potter fans will recognize the name.)

The formula is from "Baking Artisan Bread" by Ciril Hitz, and I followed it and the author's instructions to the letter, except constructing the individual rolls.  The ones shown were constructed using the little-ball-on-top-of-the-bigger ball approach. Additionally, the intructions called for 90g of dough for each mold, and I thought my molds were the same size as those shown in the author's pictures. They weren't.  One head slipped off entirely. The oven spring in this dough made them look more like popovers than brioche in my forms.

So I tried again. using some of the reserved dough--thus the 1 and 1/2 tries--with three changes. First I reduced the quantity for each mold to 65g, secondly, I'd baked the first four at 345°F on the oven's convection mode, as recommended by the author; the 1 and 1/2 try I used the recommended 265°F thermal mode setting, and lastly, I used the author's novel shaping. Here's an attempt to explain it in words. Starting with the dough pre-shaped into a ball, by pressing and rolling with one finger two balls--one large, one small--connected by a thin neck of dough is created. Then, the neck is stretched to three fingers width, the larger ball is turned into a doughnut shape, and the smaller ball--neck intact--is passed through the doughnut hole, and the doughnut shape is gently coaxed to collapse around the now curved neck. (I  hope readers can visualize this. I couldn't have done it with out the author's pictures.)

Try 1 and 1/2

Photo says it for me. Far from perfect, but OK.

David G