June 1, 2015 - 1:19am
Help needed on brioche recipe
This is a brioche doughnut that i would love to make again - I lost the recipe!
I have the recipe below - and it is good - but lacks the super fluffiness and chew of the attached doughnut.
I know that the original recipe had egg yolks and dry yeast in it...the doughnut was proofed for about an hour and fried at about 365 to 375.
Any help would be very much appreciated!
Ingredients1/3 cup milk (105 degrees F)
2.5 tsp fresh yeast
1 egg + 1/2 pint eggs (about 4)
1 cup cake flour
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup + 1Tbsp sugar
2 tsp fine sea salt
6 ounces (1 1/2 stick) softened butter
- Measure yeast and set aside.
- Heat the milk and check temperature with a thermometer. If milk gets too hot let it sit until the temp comes down in the bowl.
- When at 105 degrees F sprinkle milk with the yeast and allow it to dissolve.
- Once the yeast is dissolved whisk in 1 egg and the cake flour. A fork is best for this whisking. A regular whisk will get clogged.
- When the dough is smooth, sprinkle one cup all-purpose flour over the top.
- Set the dough aside and cover in a warm place for about 30 minutes until the flour cracks. This will make a sponge-dough.
- Lightly beat your eggs and mix into the sponge-dough using the dough hook attachment of your mixer at medium speed to distribute the eggs into the dough.
- When smooth (about 5 mins), add the sugar, salt, and remaining 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour. Start the mixer on low and increase speed as the dough begins to start separating from the bowl. This can take about 15 minutes.
- Add the butter a little at a time while mixing until all the butter is incorporated then mix for another 10 minutes on med-low speed until the dough pulls from the side of the bowl.
- Cover the dough and set in a warm place until doubled in size or about 2 hours.
- Punch and stretch the dough to bring it back to its original size. This releases the gases made by the yeast and distributes the yeast more evenly for the second/cold rise.
- Cover the bowl and refrigerate to let it rise overnight.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. There is so much butter in the dough that you don’t need a lot of flour. You just need enough to keep it from sticking.
- Stretch the dough into shape for rolling.
- Roll the dough to about 3/4-inch thick. Make sure to “shrink” the dough while rolling so that you do not end up with oblong donuts. Too little flour under the dough while rolling can cause poor shrinking.
- Cut your dough into bismarck or donut shape. Watch your edges and try to map out the best cuts to make the best use of your first-roll dough. Save scraps for later.*
- Transfer the doughnuts to a floured pan or cutting board.
- Proof the donuts for about 1 hour (your time will vary depending on climate).
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...a more tear-and-share style of brioche than a cakey one. If that's true - and please tell me if I"m wrong - then it might be worth checking the fine print on your flour bags. For fluffy brioche, I use 00 pasta flour which is about 13% protein. It's not too strong, but still contains lots of gluten which you'll need to get that open structure. I guess, you might need to mix different proportions of your flours to get close to 13%. In case that proves difficult, here are some other suggestions you could try first:
1. It might be a good idea to scald the milk because heat breaks down the protease enzyme in milk which inhibits yeast activity. You'll probably get a fluffier interior if you do. In the photo you link to, the thermometer reads 103F. To scald you have heat the milk up to 185-190F.
2. Personally, I'd never add yeast to a105F liquid. Yeast is happiest somewhere between 75-80F, so it might be worth cooling the milk down first. A lot.
3. The recipe then takes some very elaborate steps. I suspect you don't need to worry about their precise order nor about creating a sponge (which is a preferment, anyway). Brioche dough - being so soft - is very forgiving when you mix it. It would be just fine to add everything all at once (except the butter).
4. Eggs have a huge influence on the crumb of the dough. This recipe uses four which seems about right to me (I'm trying to calculate non-metric baker's percentages on the fly, so I may not have got this right). But if, after trying everything else, you still don't get the texture you want, how about cutting the number to three? Doing so might create a lighter dough. I often make ultra-light brioche by cutting the eggs even more:. But don't try that, try three. :) And don't forget you have to compensate for the lost liquid volume. Some extra milk would be perfect. I don't know their volume in cups, but one egg would equate to just over 2 oz.of milk.
5. How about dropping the punch (argh, dough crime!) and stretch step? Gently turning out and degassing with a Hamelman lettter-fold might be preferable. You don't want to start making tight gluten strands by punching and stretching. If you want soft, stretchy dough, under-developed gluten is better. And I guess you'll need to preserve all those gas cells created by the yeast, so punching would be counter-productive.
Anyhow, I hope at least one part of this is helpful.
..between European and North American flours, so my suggestion about using 13% flour is probably wrong. If you hunt around the myriad of forum threads on this subject, you'll see that it's very difficult to make like-for-like comparisons. I'd suggest aiming for an AP at around 11% and seeing how thing go from there.
I have never tried frying brioche as doughnuts, but I have made plenty of baked brioche buns and bread. i would suggest replacing the cake flour with all purpose flour, for a more even crumb, also reduce the eggs to 3 and add a little more water or milk to help make a nice fluffy dough.
I must to say though, the picture you show here of your brioche doughnuts looks pretty good already!
greetings from mybreadandbrot.com
Thank you for taking the time to reply - i am testing out the suggestions here and will post a pic in the next few days! Cheers - Cheryl
Thank you so much for your detailed comments - I have been working on new dough options every day - this really helped! Cheers - Cheryl
Did you manage to find a recipe? The doughnut looks heavenly and that’s the kind I want as well rather than the dense bready one I’ve been making
Hi! The picture of the doughnut you posted looks heavenly! Did you manage to find a recipe to replicate that eventually? My brioche doughnuts are coming out too bready unfortunately :(
All the suggestions here were very helpful. Using APF etc. I also found that only mixing until the butter is incorporated and the just as the dough pulls away and forms a ball is good. I am not sure how fluffy you want it but playing with the liquid to dry ratio and only using water works.
do you have a set recipe you could share please?