Recipe tips: Brioche

Hello fork musketeers!

You may remember that I made croissants and brioche a couple of days ago.

I didn't want the post to be too long, so I decided to split it. Without further ado, here are some tips on how to make your brioche delicious.

Brioche tips

Brioche is an enriched bread (i.e. viennoiserie) that uses whole eggs, milk and butter. It has an unbelievably soft texture and a really great bread to have for breakfast. I personally find this bread a little too rich for my taste, someone who likes very rich breads might like brioche.

So mix your dough until all your ingredients, except the butter, is incorporated.

All initial ingredients have just been incorporated.

The last ingredient!
Don't mind the weird shadow.

If you're doing this by hand, I'm going to warn you: this dough requires a lot of kneading. Like a lot. We used the mixer and, set to a modest 3 or 4, this took about 10-20 minutes of straight kneading to finish. This dough is also incredibly sticky, so if you hate handling wet doughs this may make you really frustrated and hate this bread.

Protip: I've heard of a technique to handle wet doughs. It's called the "stretch and fold" method. Here's a handy link to see it in action. I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard very good results with this. However, I'm not sure if it'll work for brioche specifically since S&F is a hands-off method to develop gluten. Try it out on your next frustratingly wet and sticky dough and see what happens.

Whether you're doing this by hand or with a mixer, you have to keep kneading the dough until the dough has a more tacky texture to it. If you're using a mixer, make sure to scrape down the sides to ensure a consistent texture throughout the bread. You know when it's done when it doesn't stick to the sides anymore. Now scoop your dough out and pop it in the fridge to rest.

When you take it out of the fridge, it's going to feel hard. Don't be alarmed; this is because of the butter in it. Just scoop it out and gently knead until it's more pliable. Don't get it too warm since you want to keep the butter cold.

So now it depends on how you like to present your brioche. In class we did it in three different formats: mini brioche à tête; a tall cylinder and a loaf.

Format #1: Brioche à tête

So these are supposed to look like this.

Photo not mine. Thank you google.

Mine obviously does not look like that.

Yes, I totally nibbled on the bottom one.

So what's the deal man? It involves a bit of dexterity and I could write a bunch of steps...

Buuuuuttt instead here's a video I took of Chef doing it.

So my mistake here was the head wasn't large enough. Mine were small so as the bread expanded it, more or less, absorbed my pathetically very small brioche head. Hence why they look more like mounds than small heads.

I found the trickiest part is pushing the dough against the sides to give the brioche head some room. However, if you're never rolled dough into balls, you might find that step a bit tricky.

There are a few components to this motion.

1. You need to keep the base of your palm on the table at all times. I know it's more common to place your palm on top of the malleable thing and roll. However, in this case you get a rounder shape; you take advantage of the dough's properties to help you and you don't use both hands. So if you get super pro at this you can roll two balls of dough at the same time. Sweet!
2. Keep your hand curled as if you were holding a cup. Depending on the size of your hand and your dough ball, your palm should be the part that's really dragging the dough. There's no finger action here.
3. You need a lightly floured surface. If you have too much flour, the dough will just glide everywhere. If you have too little flour, your dough sticks to everything.
4. Now move your dough in a small, circular motion. It should roll up into a ball nicely. Don't worry if it has a teeny tiny tail. Just place the tail on the bottom and nobody will be the wiser. I promise.

This is a basic technique to roll small pieces of dough so it'll be useful to learn for your bread adventures. The other thing I need to do is to not dig my finger into the brioche head. I think this contributed to its pathetic small size. You need to gently tilt the head out of the way and scoop the dough from the bottom and press it to the sides. This creates more room for the brioche head to sit in.

For the cylinders you just need to coat it with a bit of oil or fat. Roll a ball and then plop it in. Boom, you're done. So hard and challenging; I know.


Format #3: Brioche loaf
Given the various forms of bread, my personal favourite is a loaf. I like having the choice of how thick I want my slice of bread to be. Thinner slices for sandwiches; thicker slices for fried eggs. Yum!

Anyway, if you google brioche loaves they tend to have some kind of poofy pattern on top. You can totally just roll it up, place it into a pan and call it a day. If you want some interesting patterns, keep reading.

For the loaf we made, we cut our dough into eight six somewhat equal pieces. Roll these out into a log that fits your pan. You want to be a bit strategic with them; put the smaller pieces on the outside and the bigger ones on the inside. It'll help give your loaf a nicer shape. Depending on the side of your pan, you can also just roll them into balls and put them next to each other. Really, it's up to you.

Protip: Make sure to keep the seam of your log/ball on the bottom of the pan. If you put your dough seam side-up your bread is going to expand and explode in all sorts of ways. You'll end up with a really cool textured look but it's probably not what you're going for.

Whatever format you choose to do, do an egg wash and let them proof until doubled in size. Or you can use my HolyShit Plush Gauge™; it's totally scientifically proven. Then, just before you put it in the oven, another coat of egg wash.

Protip: So remember how egg wash acts like glue? If you're making a loaf, make sure you don't get egg wash down the sides. It'll prevent your bread from rising. Then you and I will be super sad.

If you're having a hard time to tell its doneness, I used a knife down the middle of the product. Don't poke it too much, otherwise your goods will look a little weird with all those holes. Anyway, the knife should could out clean; just remember to wipe it if it has wet dough on it.

Then tadaaaa you're done. Enjoy your brioche in whatever form you made them!

If you have any feedback and/or comments, don't be shy and leave a comment down below. :)