Search Results for “brioche”

Brioche Dough: How Much Gluten?

It’s still the age of Ragnarök here in Louisville, I’m looking out at dark grey skies and more rain, rain, rain. I don’t let that slow me down if I can help it but blowing, misty rain is hell on whipped cream. Fortunately reader David has a question for me. It goes like this:

Your brioche dough recipe calls for all purpose flour when one might expect to use bread flour for a higher rise. Is brioche not typically expected to be as airy and light or is there another reason for it?

Interesting question, David. It all depends on what you want to use the brioche for. Will you be making a simple loaf? Dinner roll-type têtes de brioche? Or perhaps you’re using it as a base for a bee sting cake or cinnamon rolls. In any of those cases you might want to vary the formula a bit to achieve a difference effect.

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Speak to Me of Brioche

Brioche is one of those base pastry components that most of us take for granted, and that’s a mistake because brioche is miraculous in itself. It’s a bread, but more than that a golden bread, and more than that a very rich but still feather light golden bread, full of egg yolks and butter (sometimes brown butter, which cranks the deliciousness factor still higher). But how can a bread contain so much egg and milk fat yet remain so light? Friends, it’s all in the mixing.

The story of pastry is one of war between the forces of Up and the forces of Down. The Up brigade consists of all the materials that give a baked item its volume and lightness: mainly white, gluten-rich wheat flour but also water, egg whites and leavers like yeast and baking powder. Together these components form what you might think of as the beams and girders of a bread or cake layer. They are the structure that surrounds and contains the empty space in the crumb.

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Making Sausage in Brioche

This is a sort of high-end French pig-in-a-blanket. It makes a fabulous light dinner or picnic along with a little salad, grilled vegetables and cold beer. Here I made mine in a pullman pan since I sourced a large garlic sausage and I like the presentation: the circle with the square. You can use different sausages if you like of course. A large kielbasa works nicely. If you want to forego the form and hard-to-source encased meats you can just use standard 1″ sausages, roll them in thinner pieces of brioche and bake them free form. They taste just as good!

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Sausage in Brioche Recipe

Here’s a bit of bistro — read “simple” — fare that makes a fantastic summer meal with a little salad and wine. It’s pretty much what it sounds like: cooked sausage baked into a loaf of brioche. It’s rich but not too much so. Just plain nice. You’ll need:

1 1/2 recipes brioche dough, cold
about three links fresh sausage
about 2 tablespoons butter
egg wash
flour

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Making Brioche Polonaise

I’ll admit it, fancy pastries can be scary. You see a lengthy list of make-ahead components and you wonder: when I finally get to the end of this road will it all be worth it? Will it really be different and special? Or only marginally better than something I can buy in a shop? Legitimate concerns, all. I can tell you that brioche polonaise is one of those sweet mother of God pastries. It does have several components, all of which you’re better off making yourself. Most will keep for many days ahead of time. Make one each day for three or four days and the final assembly and bake is pleasantly low-stress. You’ll love the process and feel proud when it’s done. Ready? Then let’s begin.

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Where does brioche REALLY come from?

That’s a tough question, reader Janey. You’re quite correct that the word “brioche” has existed in the French language since about the year 1400. It’s a variant of the Old Norman broyer which means “to knead” or “to break up.” However just because the word has existed for that long it doesn’t mean that anything like modern brioche was around back then.

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Next Up: Brioche Polonaise

Every time I start to get simple I feel the urge to go get all fancy again. Since I’ve gotten about as simple as a baker can get over the last week (at least where ingredients were concerned, flatbread techniques turned out to be surprisingly involved) I figure it’s time to rebound with something rather […]

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Where does brioche come from?

Does it come from southern France? That’s very hard to say, reader Peg. “Probably not” is about the best answer I can come up with for that excellent question. Brioche is a very old bread, or rather to be more precise, it is a very old word for bread. Brioche as we know it now, […]

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Why are king cakes made of brioche?

…asks reader Kendra. That’s a good question, since many other types of kings’ cakes made outside New Orleans (notably galette des rois) are made with flaky dough. To that I’d say that while the brioche ring is the most famous of the New Orleans king cakes, some bakeries do make the French-style flaky galette. In fact I was steered in that direction by more than one local who believed that the French style was both better-tasting and truer to the king cake aesthetic. I’ve already done that one, of course, so my thought was to press on with something new.

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On Babas and Brioche

What’s the difference between the two? asks reader Claire. There’s no question that the two are very similar, reader Claire. Both are yeast-leavened and both are quite buttery. However there is a difference between them, and that has to do with how much egg they contain. A typical baba is much eggier, which makes it lighter, more cake like and a good deal more crumbly.

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