It should go without saying, but I'm going to say it - some breads are harder than others. Brioche is one of these breads. For those of you that watch the Great British Baking Show (and those of you that don't, why???), I'm guessing you've watched the contestants freaking out and being unsure of whether what they are doing is right. And if you're like me, you may sometimes think, or even say out loud, "what are they freaking out about? You've made bread before. How hard could this type of bread be?" Well, I have now learned a valuable lesson. It can be pretty different and hard.
Brioche is what is called an "enriched" dough. This means it has a lot of butter, eggs, and some milk in it. This makes for a really light and delicate bread that is very flavorful. It also means that you work the dough a lot less and it's pretty sticky. It also spreads out much larger than I thought it would. I started as usual, by searching out lots of different recipes, and finally settling on this one from Delish (https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a28848483/brioche-bread-recipe/). One of the first things I noticed is the sheer amount of butter and eggs (2 loaves of bread, 6 eggs, 2 sticks of butter), but hey, things that taste good often have lots of butter. The recipe starts by having you make a sponge - flour, yeast and milk together to give the yeast a chance to activate before putting it in the dough. This is important because having this much fat in your dough can retard the yeast growth. There's also a longer rise time involved - these loaves rose twice for 90 minutes each.
I had the idea that I was going to make hamburger buns out of 1/3 of the dough, but they turned into mini loaves, as seen here, but other than that, this bread came out amazingly.
With that, I'm off to take care of some other projects around the house. And think about what's for dinner tonight. Stay happy and healthy.
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