"BreadWorldCup" news and stories

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.

If you're a bread geek you know that the Baking World Cup is just around the corner. Properly known as the Coupe De Monde De Boulangerie, this is the Olympics of the baking world. It takes place every three years in Paris at the European exhibition, a major world bread, pastry, and catering expo. This time around it's scheduled for March 30 through April 1, 2008.

Started in 1992, the Baking World Cup gives the three competitors -- from twelve teams -- eight hours to make from scratch all of their breads. The each teammate is responsible for a specific category; baguette and specialty breads, vienoisserie (which is all of the croissant and puff pastry type breads), and artistic design (this person is spends the day making a showpiece from bread). This year there is an additional category called savory selection which requires that all three teammates work together to create a selection of savory rolls, pastries, and small sandwiches.

The Bread Bakers Guild of America sponsors Team USA at the Baking World Cup. It holds a series of competitions to find its next set of team members every three years, choosing the next team just before the current team competes. This gives the team three years to prepare. The members of Team USA competing in 2008 are Dara Reimers in artistic expression, Solveig Tofte in Baguette/Specialty breads, and Peter Yuen in Vienoisserie. Go Team USA!

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