"bread bakers guild" 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.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Bread Bakers Guild of America (I'm sure there are a lot of you), it's an organization dedicated to promoting artisan bread making in America. This is the group responsible for fielding the US Bread Team in the Baking World Cup. I think it's an awesome cooperative.

One of my few problems with the Guild, though, is the way they organize events. Whenever they set up workshops, classes, or gatherings of any kind, the events are all in a limited set of geographic locations. They aren't really spread out so that people from more parts of the country can easily attend.

Well, the Guild has out done itself this time. This spring and summer, the group has put together a series of classes called the "Women of the Guild: North American Tour 2008". Not only does it shine a light on women bakers (yay), the tour really does go all over the US. (Well, they could hit more southern cities, but at least the tour is hitting my southern city).

The classes will be taught by a female Guild member and will focus on a specialty of that particular member. There is a lot more information at the Bread Bakers Guild website. You can find out about dates and registration. You can also order a tee-shirt. So even if you can't go to a class, you can look like you did!

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