May 3, 2022 - 7:13pm
Brioche - Why can't butter be melted?
Every conventional brioche and other enriched dough recipes specifies usings room temp/ unmelted butter, but I cannot find a good reason why. This video from Foodgeek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRGCI2UT8ik suggests that maybe there isn't much if any difference between using melted and unmelted butter. Is there something his experiment was missing? Perhaps we can incorporate more unmelted butter into the dough and his recipe did not use enough better to make a difference?
Share
Incorporating unmelted colder butter makes a taller brioche (or any other bread with cold butter mixed in it). Melted butter makes a more compact crumb with smaller and tighter pores.
You can melt butter, why not, just understand the consequences and know how to incorporate it properly.
That rule, or explanation of different impacts of fluid and solid fats on dough behavior, is from the textbook for the baker's apprentices. I have that textbook, maybe I will show you the illustration from it.
i actually have that book as well so ill try to find the page. thx
I’ve been trying to develop a new brioche recipe and I often wondered about this. Once I got the hang of incorporating the butter at room temp it seemed easier than melting it so I’ve stuck with it aside from a few random tests.
Brioche by hand, Bruno Albouze's version. I have made this and the flavor and texture are wonderful. It is a challenging method, mainly the butter incorporation step.
https://youtu.be/ziZe_SGblAY