tuesday brioche (a la Bernard Clayton)

Cold today, cold yesterday, probably cold tomorrow. But not as cold as today. Which means? Obviously spending the day cold-proofing an egg-heavy butter-forward bowl of brioche dough. Clearly. It keeps a gal from feeling like she's going to keel over if she wakes up one more time this April, clutching both down comforters to her throat and dragging the dog up into the bed to warm her up before braving clothes. (Ugh..)

So!

This dough is lovely and it's a mess. Bernard Clayton , who seems to have this dream job of traveling the world, eating bread and making bread, warns us of this when we set out to get after something like brioche. Maybe because brioche (like croissant) strives to defy physics by maintaining integrity under stringent conditions and demands- mainly, more butter and eggs than you can imagine getting into three pounds of dough, and doing it all, like a champ, in the blustery cold of the fridge (or the frosty after-hour counter tops courtesy of a mountain spring.) He's very charming about it :

"...Continue slapping back the dough for about 18 -20 minutes. Don't despair. It is sticky. It is a       mess. But it will slowly begin to stretch and pull away as you work it."

Which of course makes you feel like you should try to struggle through it, in the name of buttery pastry.

Brioche has a history, and fierce historian, and many people feel it should be done in one specific way, with no deviations whatsoever. And there are as many ways of making brioche as there are brioche historians, I imagine. For example, you could decide to do this over a period of four days (four?!), with a starter, without a starter. With a starter made from wild yeasts attracted to grape skins, or one made over the course of a month in a jar of a specific size. You could use cream cheese to enrich the dough, you could use anywhere form three to nine eggs. Truly. You have to have a decisive hand, and, most importantly, a clear idea of how much of your time you want to give to this dough. Because you could end up giving a lot. 

Luckily for us, Bernard gives us a recipe for Brioche Without a Starter (pages 611 - 612.) Which can be done in one day if you start early, or over the course of two if you employ your refrigerator overnight.

This is what I did:

Into the bowl of a stand mixer I put:
2 cups of flour
3 teaspoons of yeast (I used extra because of my cold kitchen)
1/4 cup dried milk (I know right? but it's worth it, it adds silkiness)
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 cup of hot raw milk (or you could use water)

When that was homogenized I added, a few tablespoons at a time

2 sticks of butter (soft)

and, one at a time

6 eggs (we have a glut of teenage eggs right now- the product of chickens new to laying who make many, luminous small and wompy eggs. Bernard requests only 5.)

And then, the balance of the flour (about 4 cups) a half a cup at a time until the dough comes together to form a heavy, sticky, mess of a dough.

This is the despair he warns about. Because it looks like pancake batter for a while. And then five minutes more. Then ten minutes more. In all it should stay in there for about twenty minutes. Switch to the bread hook when you can't imagine it needs more mixing. And then, in a flash (when you step away to warm more milk for your coffee,) it will become this beautiful, shiny, elastic dough that does actually clean the sides of the bowl. And you will be thrilled! And so glad you had a mixer instead of rock-hard french peasant woman arms that would be, otherwise, beat all to hell. Do no under any circumstances decide that your dough just won't come together and take it out from under the hook early. You will be so sad and so may eggs will have been wasted. Keep after it! And then get over it:

Then you leave it to double (about 3 hours.)

Then you fold it over itself, cover it in plastic and linen and leave it in the fridge for at least four hours, preferably overnight.

And, after folding it over on itself yet again to deflate it,  you can divide it and shape it. This recipe makes three pounds of dough suitable for two loaves of bread. Knowing that I can easily sit down and eat almost an entire loaf of bread on my own, I made one loaf (the shape, made by laying balls of dough in a zig zag pattern along the bottom of the pan is called Brioche Nanterre,) and many small buns using a variety of little ceramic teacups I had greased and papered.



Shape the dough on a well floured work surface. Brioche is meant to be a stiff dough (like challah,) and this is due mainly to the abundance of butter that firms up as it chills. As with puff pastry or croissant dough, if you feel the dough softening under your hands as your work and becoming very elastic this is a sign that it has warmed up a bit too much and can cause the oven lift to be a bit weak and the shaping to lose its integrity. Despite pining to get this in the oven already, put it in the freezer for about ten minutes before going on. Why waste all your efforts now?




These need a while to warm to room temperature and to do their final rise. Give them between 90 minutes to two and a half hours. If baking in a loaf pan you want the dough to just meet the edges of the pan. With the teacups it's a softer time frame because they vary in size. Go for a rough doubling from them and hope for the best. Then in a 475 degree oven (dry heat for these,) put them in together and test after 25 minutes. As usual, the bottom of the loaf should ring hollow when wrapped with the knuckles.

 

And that is what we call a productive Tuesday morning. Whew! If you're lucky you might have some sweet raw butter to eat with these. We're not that lucky. But we do have a lovely ruby slab of membrillo in the fridge, and some fiercely fresh eggs which perch so nicely when fried across the saffron crumb of still-warm brioche. I figure that's almost as good.

the bread journey

the sound of crust, and a bread journey. this time with more loft, bonus crackling crust, and a fishing about in the cabinet for a fresh jar of jam to crack open.

this is an old world, patience trying (or patience cultivating!) bread practice.

1. the leaven is made by adding a spoonful of mature starter (which has aged for a minimum of two weeks) to a mixture of flour and water and left overnight.

2. the following day the leaven and the remaining flour and water are added and left to autolyse (rest) for 45 minutes.

3. following this resting period a little more water and some salt are added and the dough undergoes its bulk fermentation- a rest of between 3 and 5 hours depending on the ambient heat of your kitchen. during the bulk fermentation the dough, in lieu of being kneaded, undergoes a series of folds and turns in its oiled bowl every half an hour for the duration.

4. the dough is then divided, loosely shaped and left to rest for 40 minutes for the gluten to relax.

5. following this the dough is shaped and put into towel/baker's linen-lined baskets or bowls to undergo its final fermentation period in the refrigerator 4 - 5 hours or overnight. (the longer this final fermentation process goes on the more flavor and texture the dough achieves in its final stage.)

6. the following day the bread is taken from the refrigerator and let to come to room temperature for about 40 minutes.

7. the bread is then baked at 500 degrees for twenty minutes, its cover is removed and it is baked out for a remaining 20 - 30 minutes.

8. lastly the bread is left to cool (singing in its sublime crackly way) for a minimum of one hour. this sets the crumb, allows the moisture to evaporate and soften the crust and for ample air currents to seal the crust against premature staling.

9. only then is time for bread and jam.

more bread

further experimentation with biga and poolish.  fig hazelnut adapted from here. the apricots were swapped out for figs, the hazelnuts were toasted instead of left raw, and chopped instead of left whole. fistfuls of whole wheat and amaranth flour made up the bulk of the bread flour weight resulting in a denser, sweeter, creamier crumb. the only strangeness of working with these breads is that there is no supreme oven-spring or loft as with commercial yeasts. this could be due to the cooler temperatures of the kitchen, the sporadic behavior of the rebel yeasts that have been snatched from the air or my lack of finesse in the fermentation process. likely it is a question of finesse.

fig hazelnut bread
(adapted from cristina's tuscan table)

1 1/2 teaspoon yeast
1 c warm water
1 tablespoon molasses
1 tablespoon honey
3/4 t olive oil
2 tablespoons rolled oats
1 cup biga
3 cups high-gluten bread flour (or a mixture of your choice. 1 cup of bread flour is necessary to provide stout enough gluten matrices to suspend the figs and nuts. the other two can be varied. amaranth, spelt, and whole wheat are all sweet earthy flours that pair nicely with the fruit and nuts.)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 c figs, chopped thinly, lengthwise
1/2 cup hazelnuts, whole, skin-on

preheat the oven to 350

spread the hazelnuts on a baking sheets and toast, stirring occasionally until fragrant, about 10 minutes. once properly toasted, the skins on the hazelnuts will be quite alarmingly black, but never fear! this is the indication that the nuts are golden brown on the inside. wrap the nuts in a tea towel and rub back and forth until the skins loosen and flake off. chop coarsely and set aside.

in the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook, dissolve yeast in warm water. add molasses, honey, oil, oats, biga and flour. mix on low, adding salt after about 5 minutes. continue mixing until dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl, about 3 minutes after adding the salt. if the dough is too sticky, add more flour, 1/4 cup at a time until the dough masses around the hook.

knead in nuts and figs, turn in an oiled bowl and leave to double in volume, roughly 2 hours.

after the first rise, shape the dough. turning into a loaf pan will provide a thicker crust with a somewhat damper crust. free form loaves will spread lightly, have a thinner, crispier crust, and a drier more open crumb. both are equally delicious.

after shaping the loaf let rise a second time until doubled, another hour and a half. once fully proofed slash the dough a few times taking care not to cut any deeper than a 1/2". these slashes act as vents allowing the bread to expand without tearing, so don't neglect it.

bake to 35 - 50 minutes (longer for a loaf pan, shorter for a free form loaf) until golden brown on top and hollow - sounding when rapped sharply on the bottom.

allowing the bread to cool for 30 minutes, though difficult, allows the crumb to set and the loaf to develop flavor.

slow fermentation

"...though the 'sound of crust' sounds similar to the Zen koan "the sound of one hand clapping," there is also an importance difference. the attainment of the sound of the crust is like the culmination of a pilgrimage. that there is a sound that accompanies perfection is, in itself, a wonderful realization. such a sound is cathartic in that it lets escape, if even for a moment, the remembrance of the perfection that lies at the core of each of us. beauty evokes beauty, love evokes love, and the sound of crust evokes an image of our being in the process of becoming. the sound of crust is what we hear when everything comes together in those brief and too infrequent moments of pure love, pure beauty, and pure stillness. the sound of crust, then, is not quite the same as the sound of one hand clapping because crust is an outer sound, entirely of this world, the outer world. its connection with something inner is grace. the sound of crust is like an icon, not painted but baked, in which a window is briefly opened onto greater understanding..." --Peter Reinhart, Brother Juniper's Bread Book (this and other fancy titles to be found HERE! don't buy your books from amazon if you don't have to...)

Peter Reinhart, famed author of the Breadbaker's Apprentice among other myriad publications, began his work with bread as a monk in a monastery in Massachusetts decades ago. he writes about the link between bread and the Divine that was made apparent to him in his early baking days. obviously, much time and thought has gone into fleshing this out, as you can see above, but biases about theology and mainstream religion aside, his point is a well taken. that we can find the Divine (or the Universe, or the Major Plan, or God, or Whomever's name you'd like to add in) in the simplest rituals -such as bread baking- means that there is always the potential for illumination and revelation in any of the tasks to which we are truly connected. Reinhart and others emphasize the word "craft" which is a favorite word among some of my favorite people, and to this word i believe he subscribes the attitudes of tender dedication applied to a task that lights one up from the inside. this 'sound of crust' treatise seemingly can be applied to most anything one sits down to get up to their elbows in with love and tirelessness.

needing a dose of serious Illumination myself I applied myself to Chad Robertson's new(ish) book Tartine Bread which is an offshoot from the famed Tartine a bay area bakery we could all be so lucky to live near. Robertson's approach to bread, like Reinhart's, seeks to bring back the rituals of the slow rise, or slow fermentation. taking cues on the shortcomings of commercial yeast (its finished loaves tendency towards swift staleness, a flavor and crust that seem to be lacking) and the finicky schedules imposed on us by more medieval traditions that demand many hours of fermentation and bulky dough loads he has sought to bring about a renaissance of what French baker's call "the golden age" of bread baking. that is, bread made with the innovation of baker's yeast (versus the more traditional brewer's yeast leftover from beer brewing) and the slow, cool fermentation that results in a loaf with a burnished and singing crust, a creamy crumb and incomparable flavor. indeed, Robertson is wary of adding baker's yeast in at all, save for enriched doughs like brioche and croissant. the yeasts derived for the homemaker's version of country bakery bread is harnessed from the air. wild yeasts! especially those who delight in grape musk which one presents in the form of white wine that has been haunting the back of the refrigerator for a few too many weeks.

this slow fermentation demands absolute attentiveness, presence and patience. it also requires the baker to be responsive, intuitive and to use their instincts. following a bread recipes is never straightforward as we all live in places at different altitudes, with different water and different humidity. but with slow rise bread especially we are asked to respond to the bread dough as a living thing (which indeed it is) that has likes, dislikes and needs. the result, after many hours and slight oven burns does in fact give one a moment's pause, to listen to the singing of the crust and reflect on what can be done with flour, water, yeasts from the air, and patience.

in that same vein, more experiments with laminate dough are on their way, stay tuned.

hard tack. of sorts.

living alone is a new kind of scarf to swathe my throat it. in some ways the freedoms are chrysallate; being coocooned in any quality of silence or din i cultivate, sleeping when my limbs are heavy, waking only when dogs stir or doves insist and emerging without the weight of anyone's daily plans or intentions. the cramped parts, though, are very cramped.

it is stifling to inspect a homely and spare refrigerator, to eye a jar of raw milk that isn't getting any emptier no matter how many slugs i gamely take, or slinking away from a compost pail that's somehow immediately full and sending up wavering constellations of fruit flies. when you learn to count on the appetite for space and substance of more than your own you immediately lose track of how much you take up. is it possible i've eaten only three eggs in the last week but have gone through, literally, four sticks of butter? apparently i've used less than a fourth of a roll of toilet paper? made only four pots of coffee? additionally, the new nest is paned with mirrors on all the closet doors and i can't help but see myself float through the small rooms looking everywhere for a purpose with which it populate my days.

my knees are  narrow, my ribs show paley beneath my collarbones, my jawbones shave off pares of quiet as i dry dishes. it seems, without some sort of supervision, i am becoming small, crackly and bouyant. it is good thing for so many dog bowls and empty marrow bones to moor me. but at any rate, it seems imperative that i anchor myself in the human world by amassing sustenance.

and so! the first Bread Day in the new nest came and i must say, eating a half loaf in under an hour will certainly make for a soporific kind of couch-based solidity.

an oaty sponge; studded with goji berry, sour cherry, hemp seeds, molasses

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kneaded smooth after a 30 minute autolyse, kissed and ready for the first proof

(**an esteemed associate of mine taught me that it is imperative the dough is smooched before it is set to pursue its puffy destiny. i think, probably, any bread success i have is due to her wisdom. unfortunately, my contribution in the form of introducing her to buckwheat was not as well-received.**)

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luxury filling: softened butter, brown sugar, himalayan salt, sprouted sunflower seeds.

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rolled, shaped, nestled in a little collar of crackly parchment for its last rise...

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...baked off and now the worst part: letting the loaf (resounding like a timpany) rest for two hours to set the crumb and develop a fragrant yeasty flavor...

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et voila!

that is Survival Bread. and i think it really did wonders. such as sparking a plan to go out and sleep in the wild, necessitating a visual list of course

the tentative plan, barring any other unforeseen dog-sitting, reminder of desperate errands, or spontaneous sloth will i think look like this
 

 

and if i'm lucky, with enough survival bread and almond butter to way me and my pockets down, i won't be blown from the snowy saddle.