Best brioche ever

by Shayna Glick, Posted Sep 29th 2008 @ 11:00AM

A loaf of bread that's been baked in a way that makes it four sections of dough baked together.

I have posted about brioche before, but I've found a new recipe for the most tender and delicious bread you'll ever eat. It is more than worth your time. The recipe is the one the 2005 US Bread Team used in the 2005 Bread World Cup (I got a copy because I'm a member of the Bread Bakers Guild of America). They used this dough as a base for a strawberry danish-like confection, but I chose it because I needed a nice loaf to put on the brunch buffet at work.

This brioche is a little different from others I've come across, in that it uses a short dough along with the butter to keep the gluten nice and undeveloped. While the short dough does make the flour content a little higher, it also ups the butter ratio. The sugar content is raised as well, but is still only about 8% from the dough.

This design is easy to do, just divide your dough into four pieces, roll each one into a ball, and place them in the loaf pan. As the dough rises, it smooshes together and bakes up just as you see in the picture above. Check out the gallery below for some more images. The recipe is after the jump.

Best Brioche(click thumbnails to view gallery)

This makes four loaves, 16-17 ounces each,

Short dough
2.5oz sugar
5oz unsalted butter
1 lg egg
7.5oz all purpose flour

Dough
27 oz bread flour
2.8oz water
.35oz instant yeast
14oz eggs
2.4oz sugar
.5oz salt
13.25 oz unsalted butter
all of the short dough

Mix all ingredients of the short dough together and set aside, along with the 13.25oz of butter. Mix all of the dough ingredients together except the butter and short dough. Mix until the dough is about halfway developed. Start adding the butter and short dough a little at a time, until it is all incorporated and the dough is fully developed. Place the dough into a container and cover.

Allow the dough to bulk ferment for two hours. Turn the dough out and measure it into 16oz pieces, dividing the remaining dough among the four loaves. Divide each loaf into four pieces, round into a ball, and place the four balls into a greased loaf pan. Cover the loaf pans with plastic and allow to proof for 1.5 to 2 hours. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Bake the brioche for 20 minutes, turn and bake for 10-15 minutes more (or longer if needed). It should be a deep golden brown. I usually like to turn the bread out of the loaf pans immediately, but in this case you should let the bread cool for about ten minutes. The loaves will tend to pull apart if the protein hasn't set yet.

Filed Under: Ingredients, Methods
Tags: baking, bread, bread bakers guild, bread world cup, BreadBakersGuild, BreadWorldCup, brioche, enriched bread, EnrichedBread, recipes, short dough, ShortDough

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-29-2008 @11:17AM gina said... Any chance someone could translate the ingredients into cups, T,t format? Would really like to try this one.
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9-30-2008 @12:43AM Katie H said... Hmmm. This one is a tough one to follow. Even if you can't translate into cups, could you explain some of the terms? Like how exactly do you make the short dough? Cream the butter and the sugar like a cake? Or cut the butter in like a pie crust? And what does it mean for the dough to be "fully developed"?
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9-30-2008 @4:43PM Shayna Glick said... Gina: There are lots of conversion sites online you can use. This one (http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/conversion_tables.htm ) is ok. Also keep in mind that 1C of flour is about 4oz, but for liquids the consistency of water it's 1C=8oz. If you bake a lot, it may help to get a digital kitchen scale. They're not very expensive and can come in handy.

Katie H: For the short dough, creaming everything together is the way to go. I just threw everything in the mixer at one time and creamed it together. The dough should roughly resemble a cookie dough. Fully developed means that the dough is very smooth and soft and looks finished. It means that you shouldn't see any areas where the butter hasn't been fully mixed in. If you look through the gallery you may be able to get a better sense of what the dough should look like. I think the second picture is of the dough just after it came out of the mixer.

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11-01-2008 @11:45PM Thomas Ptacek said... Just tried this. Came out OK:

* A bit dense

* Didn't get a great rise during bench proofing, so the rounds didn't fuse; I wound up with lots of brioche rolls

It was hard to tell when this dough was done mixing/kneading; it got smooth pretty quickly, but stayed pretty wet and never really stopped gripping the side of the bowl (I didn't add more flour). I may have done a lot of things wrong here.
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12-10-2008 @1:29AM Kathy said... Sounds yummy. But I agree with Gina and Katie, this is too hard to follow. It is the first time I have seen a recipe written up that way! The brioche does sound wonderful though!
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12-10-2008 @5:57PM Kathy said... Sounds yummy. But I agree with Gina and Katie, this is too hard to follow. It is the first time I have seen a recipe written up that way! The brioche does sound wonderful though!
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