Sunday, March 05, 2006
Brioche, the two day adventure.
The dough. This is with the starter mixed in with the batter, ready for the first rise and then overnight chill in the fridge. The starter had already risen for a couple of hours.
Next day, after the dough has risen and chilled it's ready for shaping. The recipe I'm using calls for rising in round cans, coffee cans work great. Then more rising!
Fresh from the oven. The dough rises to the top of the cans and then you bake, where the dough nearly doubles the size of the can. After a bit of cooling the loaves slide right out of the cans. Since the brioche dough is so rich with 3 sticks of butter and six eggs it's really great with jam, but no extra buttering of the toast is needed. Later in the week I made up some lemon curd(Fanny Farmer) and we piled that on the toast and ate it for snacks. Excellent all around. Definitely worth the two days time to make it and putting up with a super sticky hard to work with dough.
The recipe I used was the "Mousseline Brioche" from The Breads of France by Bernard Clayton Jr. Clayton along with Beard (from Beard on Bread) were the two most important cookbook writers to help bring back homemade breads to the states in the 60's and 70's. The Breads of France is a great cookbook because Clayton traveled all around France getting original recipes and stories from French Boulanger's. There are several brioche recipes in the book all from different regions of France, the Mousseline Brioche is from the Hornfleur region. I've made several of the recipes out of the book and they were all huge successes, although it's not for someone looking to make a quick loaf of bread as many of the recipes are quite involved, although always worth the effort!
Next day, after the dough has risen and chilled it's ready for shaping. The recipe I'm using calls for rising in round cans, coffee cans work great. Then more rising!
Fresh from the oven. The dough rises to the top of the cans and then you bake, where the dough nearly doubles the size of the can. After a bit of cooling the loaves slide right out of the cans. Since the brioche dough is so rich with 3 sticks of butter and six eggs it's really great with jam, but no extra buttering of the toast is needed. Later in the week I made up some lemon curd(Fanny Farmer) and we piled that on the toast and ate it for snacks. Excellent all around. Definitely worth the two days time to make it and putting up with a super sticky hard to work with dough.
The recipe I used was the "Mousseline Brioche" from The Breads of France by Bernard Clayton Jr. Clayton along with Beard (from Beard on Bread) were the two most important cookbook writers to help bring back homemade breads to the states in the 60's and 70's. The Breads of France is a great cookbook because Clayton traveled all around France getting original recipes and stories from French Boulanger's. There are several brioche recipes in the book all from different regions of France, the Mousseline Brioche is from the Hornfleur region. I've made several of the recipes out of the book and they were all huge successes, although it's not for someone looking to make a quick loaf of bread as many of the recipes are quite involved, although always worth the effort!
# posted by Mykal @ 1:38 PM 
