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.