Brioche
This is my first brioche attempt, using Hamelman's recipe with commercial yeast. I'm quite proud of it, but I'm not sure what it's really supposed to be like. I'm not sure how cakey vs. bready it's supposed to be. It certainly looks and tastes great, but I'm wondering if it's cakier than I'd like.
The problems I encountered were first that the pre-butter-addition mixing did not go as planned. The dough was very dry, and was straining the machine. So it's unclear to me if I achieved proper gluten development pre-butter. Second, I'm not sure if it was adequately mixed post-butter to achieve the "sheeting" effect. It's a very gooey dough, and it did get a bit of a windowpane, but I became afraid that I was going to overwork it if I didn't stop mixing at some point. In all it was in there for 25 minutes or so, including several short couple pauses to inspect.
I would appreciate any thoughts people have on these questions.