Brioche

This might just say it all. I made a very small amount of Peter Reinharts Rich Man's Brioche, actually only a third of the recipe. It still called for 1 1/2 sticks of butter in it, by weight is was almost the same amount as it called for flour! The recipe said this was the hardest to make of the three formula's. I took that as a challenge. Here's the end result, the "Money Shots".

From Brioche

It really has an incredible crumb on it, soft and tender, literally you can see the gluten feathering out as you pull one apart. The trouble is that it is almost dripping in butter. I was brought up on using real butter on my breads, so I can't believe I am going to say this. I ate one of these and it almost made me sick there was so much butter in it. It has been a couple hours since I ate it, and my body is still saying, "I am so glad you froze those things!" Really, with my love for breads and using real butter on them, you would think these would taste awesome to me. Even putting sugar free strawberry jam on them didn't help the situation, so I hope that my husband likes them or I might have to feed them to the chickens or something. Here is how I made them, although I really don't recommend them and won't be making them again.

Everything all measured out and ready to be made into Brioche.

My sponge was really small in that huge 6 quart bowl.

Added the other liquid ingredients. At this point I realized that such a small amount was not going to be easy to make in

my mixer.

Flour is mixed in and getting ready to start putting the butter in.

My ball of dough after mixing with the paddle. It had difficulty producing gluten, because it was small and sticky with butter. I actually did some stretch and folds on it for about an hour, trying to get it developed more.

Flattened out and ready for fridge, sorry for the blurry pictures. My cell phone was used for these and it sometimes is hard to tell if the picture is good or not.

Shaped and ready for proofing. They rose about twice this size in two hours, and then I cooked them and they really shot up.

Today, I made Peter Reinhart's Rich Man's Brioche from BBA. I've never made such a rich, buttey bread, but it was delicious. I could only eat one slice, but with raspberry jam, it made the best breakfast.

I posted this on the blog my brother and I share ( http://bakingacrosscountry.wordpress.com/ ) We're both trying to complete the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge, and also, I'm completing a high school project about artisan breads.

Anyway, here's the post!

Nowadays, we know brioche as a rich bread, enriched with enormous amounts of butter and eggs. The name brioche is derived from the Norman verb, "to pound." The Norman region of France was well known for the butter which they produced, and excessive kneading was required to incorporate all the butter into the dough.

Brioche came to Paris in the 1600s as a much heavier and far less rich bread than the one we know today. Supposedly brioche became well known with Marie Antoinette's famous quote, "qu'ils manget de al brioche" during the 1700s, which translates to "let them eat cake." This referred to the peasants who rioted because there was a lack of bread. The different butter contents of bread were baked for different classes-even the food reflected the social-class divides in 18th century France.

In the Bread Baker's Apprentice, Peter Reinhart provides three different recipes which vary in the butter content. Rich Man's Brioche has about 88% butter to flour ratio, Middle-Class Brioche has about 50%, and Poor Man's Brioche has about 20%. Since I had never made brioche, I splurged and made Rich Man's-why not? The recipe makes three loaves- In my head, the idea of three loaves somehow justified the pound (?!) of butter in the bread.

Traditionally, brioche is baked in molds as brioche a tete, which are formed with two balls of dough. Served with jam, brioche makes a perfect breakfast, and topped with meats and cheese, it can be served for lunch or dinner, thus making brioche a truly versatile bread.

I began the brioche with a sponge of flour, yeast, and milk. After the sponge rose and collapsed, I added five eggs. Next, incorporated the dry ingredients (flour, salt, and sugar), and mixed until the flour was hydrated.

After a few minutes, I mixed in a stick of butter at a time, making sure they were fully incorporated before the next addition. The dough looked smooth, and almost icing-like, because of the butter. I had never worked with such a fluffy, light bread dough, so I felt kind of intimidated in new waters.

After all the butter was added, I mixed for a few more minutes until the dough was soft, and tacky, but not sticky. I spread the dough onto a cookie sheet and put it in the refrigerator to firm up and retard overnight.

Since I don't have brioche molds, I used three loaf pans. I cut the dough into three even pieces, and with a rolling pin, I formed a rectangle. Like sandwich bread, I rolled the dough up, and placed them seam-down in the pan, and let it rise for about two hours. After it had risen for the second time, I brushed it an egg wash, to form a shiny crust.

In a 350 degree oven, I baked the bread until it was golden brown, and the internal temperature reached 190 degrees. However, when I tried to take the bread out of the pan, it kind of stuck to my not-nonstick pans, which I didn't grease. With some slight prying, I got the bread out, but slightly crushed and deflated a loaf. Also, when forming the loaves, I didn't seal the seam well, and when baked, it split on the sides.

Once cooled, I cut the bread, which flaked like a croissant, and tasted so rich and delicious. Since there is so much butter, one slice is more than enough, but every bite was so delicate and smooth. I'm glad I splurged for Rich Man's brioche, but I'm not sure how often I'll make it because of it's richness. With raspberry jam, it honestly made the best breakfast.

A few weeks ago I was reading Hamelman's recipe for brioche when I noticed in his side notes that a feuillete or laminated dough can be made from a brioche dough. While I realized that of course it can be done , it's just something that had never occured to me before. Brioche is such a rich dough to begin with, the idea of laminating even more butter into it just seemed a little over the top. Sometimes though over the top can be very good and this looked to me like it might just be one of those times. Although I had Hamelman's base formula for brioche as well as others I've used before, I didn't have any for making the feuillete. Specifically what I was looking for was the ratio of roll-in butter I would need to do the folds. Web searches turned up very little, however one site did have some actual photos of a class at King Arthur being conducted by Mr. Hamelman making up a pastry using brioche feuillete, so that was helpful in giving me some idea how to use it. Link to site: http://mzkitchen.com/?p=2120

I put a query into Andy/ananda asking if he had any ideas on it , and while he'd read about it in Bo Freiberg's book on pastry, he'd never made it himself. I decided to just wing it, see how it worked, and adjust the ratio if necessary. The first attempt I made was based on a 91% butter to flour ratio, down from the original 110% butter-108% flour ratio I'd first shown Andy when I started putting a beta recipe together. Andy thought I was a “brave fellow” for wanting to try it , which I thought was a very polite way of him saying that I might just be a little too over the top with those numbers. Having made brioche dough on numerous occasions over the years this one mixed up well with no surprises for me and I gave it a 1hr bulk ferment and put it in the refrigerator overnight. Next afternoon while I laminated the bulk of the dough for feuillete, I took a portion of it and made up a few brioche tete to bake off and see how they turned out.   They turned out fairly well I thought, not having made them for a few years and I was very happy with the flavour. Unfortunately I'd run out of time that day to do anything more with the feuillete and decided to leave it for the next day. When I got home from work the next afternoon I set about rolling out the dough to a 14x9 inch rectangle and dividing that into 3” wide strips of dough that I piped a 3/4” strip of filling (recipe to follow) along the length of each, then alongside the length of that strip I placed blueberries side by side. These were then rolled string fashion, or like you would a cinnamon bun roll, to 15 1/2” and then made into a 3 strand braid and placed in a loaf tin to rise.  It took about an 1 ¼ hrs to rise and 25-30 minutes in a 380F oven to bake. When it came out I immediately applied a thin apricot glaze to seal it and help prevent staling, then sprinkled it with toasted almond slices for garnish. When it had cooled sufficiently I drizzled the loaf with some white vanilla fondant I'd made a few days before.  The braid didn't rise quite as high as I would have liked since by this time the dough had lost some power from the additional day it'd had before I could use it, but it turned out well enough that I knew I had to try it again . As far as the flavour went?... pretty incredible. I'll get into that more a little later in this post but for now....Wow! Some photos of the the finished loaf.

The second dough was started the night before I finished eating the first loaf, (about 48 hrs..or less ) my wife being slightly appalled at how quickly I'd devoured this large, ultra rich pastry. A few muttered comments were made regarding possible repercussions were this to become a regular habit. Something about being married to a fat guy.. but I can't say for certain. Seriously though, this sort of thing is something I rarely eat, being in my 'once in a blue moon' category of food. With the second mix I wanted to make the dough a little stiffer so that I could hopefully get a high and more defined look to the braid. Other than decreasing the hydration slightly and dropping the roll-in butter ratio to 72% overall, I made the dough as I did before, following the same length of bulk fermentation, same amount of degassing and overnight retardation in the fridge. This time though I had the next day off from work and was able to do the lamination and product make up in one day, which I think resulted in a better looking product. The dough doesn't suffer from the lower ratio of roll-in butter, in fact I think you could reduce it another 5%-10% and not notice any appreciable difference in the finished product. OK , now about the filling and flavour. This seems like a natural sort of pastry that you could use a cream cheese filling of some sort in,.. and it is, but I've just never acquired a taste for the stuff. I wouldn't try to dissuade anyone from using it as a base for a filling if they like the flavour, but I think there are more elegant options available for a pastry like this. The choice I made was to use Brie, combined with honey, toasted almond meal, puff pastry crumbs, and beaten egg white to bind it into a consistency that can be easily piped. Brie works well with the fruit and nuts , not overpowering them, and also melting into the soft cells of the bread itself.

• room temp or soft Brie-114 gr

• lightly toasted almond meal-25 gr

• liquid honey-20 gr

• puff pastry crumbs-15 gr

• beaten egg white-5 gr

note: cake crumbs can be substituted for puff pastry crumbs

egg whites should be beaten lightly till they run fluidly without lumps

The fruit I had at the time, and still have the most of, is blueberries. We have a couple of very prolific blueberry bushes in our backyard that challenge us every year in trying to figure out how to use them all up before the next years crop comes in. I think we're about six months behind at present, so it's just an ongoing problem for us every year , but we try to make the best of it. The beauty of a dough like this is it's versatility. It will accept a wide variety of fillings ranging from sweet to savoury, (with some adjustments to the sugar ratio for savoury fillings being necessary) so it really depends on what flavour you want to have, or what you have on hand at the moment to use as a filling. Off the top of my head I can't think of anything within reason that this dough won't lend itself to and enhance. The flavour is of course predominated by butter, but also with that great taste of a long fermented yeast dough that permeates every bit of the silky soft crumb. Very similar to a croissant or danish dough, just better...by a long shot!

Procedure: Place all ingredients except butter in the mixing bowl and mix on 1st speed until all the ingredients are incorporated. Mix on 2nd speed for 8-9 minutes until the dough is strong and resistant

to the touch. Take the cold butter and beat it flat with a rolling pin until it's pliable and add in chunks

continuosly until all of it has been absorbed. This will take some time depending on your mixer. I

found that I had to work the dough by hand on the counter for about 5 minutes using the slap and

fold technique until the dough was developed enough that it would 'sheet'. To test for sheeting you

should be able to gradually stretch a small piece of dough out very thinly until it's almost transparent.

Let stand, covered at room temp for 1 hr then fold the dough, recover, and refrigerate overnight, degassing 2-3 times over the next several hours. The next day the dough is ready to use as a traditional brioche dough or for doing the roll-in and folds for feuillete.

To make brioche feuillete: Add cold pliable butter and flour to mixer fitted with the paddle and mix on 1st speed for 3-4 minutes , then on 2nd speed until all the flour is incorporated. Shape into a square or rectangle (depending on what lamination method will be used) and chill to the same temp as the brioche dough in the refrigerator. Roll the butter in using preferred lamination method and give a

total of 3x3 folds plus 1x4 fold, resting the dough for 30 minutes in refrigerator between each fold.

The dough is ready to use at this point.

Note: For a more thorough description of the lamination method see ananda's blog

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16082/laminated-yeasted-dough-construction

Pate Brioche Feuillete is not exactly health food but it is good for the soul , being one of those special occasion additions to a baker's repertoire that can be useful to have come Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year.

All the best,

Franko

Prehistory: waaaay back in 2007, I was obsessed with making Neapolitan pizza at home--self-clean cycle, quarry tiles, Jeff Varasano. That's where I first learned about autolysing and slow fermentation. And it explains my unhealthy preoccupation with getting the wide open crumb. During this time I also made some nice lemon rolls (from a sticky bun recipe, minus the cinnamon, minus sticky topping, lemon zest in place of cinnamon:

After baking at least one pizza a day for 40 days, I was baked out.

Fast forward to 2010. Somewhere between having delicious bread while on vacation this August in Los Angeles (homemade by my friend Daisy, and also from Breadbar (alpine loaf!!!)), baking a few disappointing loaves for an office event, discovering The Fresh Loaf, watching this video of Richard Bertinet masterfully kneading super-sticky dough, and dating a woman who loves bread, I caught the baking bug...

Day 1: Stock up on King Arthur flour (bread and AP). Order sourdough starter from Breadtopia...

Day 2: Feed starter...

Day 3: Wait...

Day 4: Baking test day! Sourdough baguette I and Brioche I

For the baguette, I roughly follow the method outlined in this post by dmsnyder, along with the baguette shaping technique shown here. Since I'm now obsessed with Bertinet's slap-fold technique, I knead more than is called for in the recipe. I'm very pleased with the resulting mini-baguette: it's got a nice sourdough tang (thanks Breadtopia!), chewy moist open crumb, and a crunchy crust:

I'm simultaneously working on a test brioche--have plans to make the real brioche the next day to impress gf--using this recipe (but kneading by hand, a la Bertinet). Delish! I eat one slice, feed the rest to my housemates.

Day 5: The brioche loaf that counts + baguette take 2

Though Brioche I was very tasty, I decide that I'd like a little airier texture. So I let the loaf proof for an extra 30 minutes or so, till it's really truly doubled in bulk, though being semi-careful not to let it overproof (not that I really know how to prevent that). I may be imagining things, but I think Brioche II is slightly airier, as I was hoping for. Gf is very pleased.

I also do a second baguette, taking more care in the shaping this time. Happily, I get an even more open crumb this time around:

Day 6: Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day arrives in mail. I have designs on making babka (for gf), sourdough hamburger buns (for house bbq) and an assortment of breads for my best friend's foodie mom... (and, now that I take a closer look at these pics, fixing the white balance on my camera!)