May I Have a Little Flour with that Butter, Please?

In a series of unfortunate (but yummy) events, which really just means that we are baking through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice in alphabetical order, we are baking Brioche, then Casatiello (which has cheese and salami in it), and then Challah.  May I mention that these are not your typical bathing-suit-season breads?  So in the week leading up to baking brioche, I began channeling my inner Frenchwoman.  As in French Women Don’t Get Fat.  After all, in spite of being adopted, I know that my birth father’s last name is Marcoux.  Shouldn’t that count for something?  Shouldn’t I be able to eat buttery bread and not have it settle right on my hips?  (I’m conveniently leaving out the other part of my heritage, which is German.  ‘Nuf said?)

Brioche had never passed my lips until last week.  No sirree.  It’s yellow.  I’m smart enough; I know what that means:  eggs and butter.  And, as I’ve mentioned before, my bread is usually all about the flour, water, and wild or commercial yeast.  Maybe a bit of cheese or olive or garlic on a very rare occasion, but nothing as caloric as eggs and butter.

So with great trepidation (what if I liked it so much that I couldn’t stop eating it?), I chose the middle-class brioche to bake, a term Peter Reinhart used to name the brioche dough with only 2 sticks of butter and 5 eggs in it. No, that’s not a typo.  I could have chosen to make the “rich man’s,” with 4 sticks of butter and 5 eggs, but the dough sounded more difficult to work with, and would add a million more hours of jogging to my week.  The “poor man’s,” which has 1 stick of butter and 4 eggs, didn’t seem worth the trouble, since it’s not supposed to be as meltingly delicious as the others.   And then, what’s the point?

Sponge with an amazing amount of gluten development - see those strands?

The BUTTER. With a few other little ingredients.

Sticky dough

Incorporating the butter, a little at a time

Smooth dough climbing the paddle

Ready to chill overnight

Final rise

Mostly for the practice of shaping them

Therefore, middle class it was, and oh what fun!  After the dough is mixed and kneaded, you place it in the refrigerator overnight – it looks like a slab of butter, but it stretches and sticks with the suction of an octopus – and it comes out the next day acting like some very fun, cool kind of buttery play-doh.  Seriously, I had never felt anything like it.  For once, my cold hands were an asset.  I had no trouble shaping the dough, for the butter was not tempted to melt in the slightest.  As you can see, I didn’t go out and purchase brioche pans (where exactly would I store them in my tiny house, already packed full to the brim with baking accessories?), so I used ramekins and a loaf pan.  It worked just fine.  This dough will rise in anything.  The bread turned out great.  If you ever want to make rich hamburger buns or extra-rich cinnamon rolls, this is your dough.  (I’m told the recipe can be found in various spots on the web.)

And all my worry was for nothing; it seems I’m not that fond of brioche after all.  It’s okay.  A piece or two here and there over the week, and also made into an extraordinarily rich french toast on Sunday, and that was enough for me.  (Maybe my inner Frenchwoman showed up, after all?) Although, when I mentioned giving some away, F said, “Over my dead body!”  Yup.  Exact quote.  So it was good, as far as brioche goes.  It’s probably an example of how to live.  Use the best, real food ingredients, and the taste buds get satisfied.  No need to over-eat.  Although, I have to say, if it had been filled with chocolate ganache and almond paste, the way one of my fellow challengers made it, I would have eaten the whole thing.  Because then it’s dessert, and all bets are off!

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Tagged as: BBA Challenge, brioche, half pound of butter and 5 eggs