Let Them Eat Cake - Brioche

“Let them eat cake”, the phrase that was so famously said by Marie Antoinette.  Except, she didn’t.  The phrase was mistranslated and should have read “let them eat brioche.”  Of course, contemporary thinking suggests that she didn’t even utter this either.

Brioche is a rich buttery and egg laden bread.  The crust of the bread is very flaky, while the crumb of the bread is extremely tender.

Again, for this recipe I’ve turned to my favorite bread book: The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.  In the book he presents three different recipes with varying amounts of butter.  I’ve always chosen to make the Rich Man’s Brioche, because as I see it, if you are going to make Brioche, you should make it the richest possible.  To that end, I’ve made some substitutions to the recipe presented in the book.  I’ve replaced the normal butter with my favorite butter: Plugra.  Also, I’ve replaced the whole milk with buttermilk.  The recipe provided in the book is excellent, but I think these two substitutions provide a better richer taste.

Once again, here is my mise en place. 

Getting ready to make the sponge, flour and yeast get mixed.

I heated the buttermilk in the microwave, but turns out I got it too hot, so here it is in a water bath, cooling down.  It needs to be between 90 & 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The sponge gets mixed and then set aside for 20 minutes, as the other ingredients get prepared.

Here’s the remaining dry ingredients: flour, sugar, and some salt.

Five eggs get cracked and then lightly whisked.

Here’s the pound of Plugra cut into manageable slices.

After 20 minute, the sponge is bubbly and ready for mixing.

The eggs get mixed into the sponge.

Then the remaining dry ingredients are mixed in.  This gets mixed for a few minutes to help the gluten develop before the butter gets mixed in.

Here’s the first round of butter getting mixed in.  The butter needs to be mixed in bit by bit.

Here’s the dough after all the butter has been mixed in.

The dough gets placed on a oiled parchment paper, then covered with plastic wrap and placed in the refrigerator overnight.

Here’s a close up view of what the dough should look like before going into the fridge.

And here we’ve skipped a few steps.  The dough came out of the fridge, was shaped into a ball, then into a brioche à tête.  The recipe makes two loaves, but since I only have one brioche pan, the other loaf got shaped into a normal bread loaf.

Here’s the brioche after baking.  The crust should be shinier and flakier but I forgot to give the loaf an egg wash prior to baking.

Here’s a close up of the crust of the finished brioche.

Baguettes - Pain à L'Ancienne

Having spent some time in Europe growing up, I occasionally crave some good bread. A few weekends ago I decided to bake up a batch of baguettes.

I ruffled through my favorite bread book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart. I can’t say enough good things about this book. It’s accessible enough for most home bakers and yet is a nice bridge book for those wanting a little more depth and technique. I’m sure this book will come up again and again.

At any rate, within the book is an excellent baguette recipe called pain à l'ancienne (French for ancient bread). It features a relatively new bread technique known as retarding. Essentially, it means that immediately after mixing the dough, you put it in the refrigerator overnight to rest and ferment. Its a technique intended to slow the process to enrich the flavor of the final bread. It’s a good technique for the home baker since it gives you time and you don’t have to bake the bread the same day. Usually you can also keep the dough refrigerated for a day or two without much loss of flavor.

And now the process:

Here are the only ingredients (other than water) that goes into the bread. Just three: flour, yeast, and salt.

Measuring out the flour. This is one of the things that you learn from this book (and others): always measure your ingredients when you can by weight. It is far more accurate than by volume, especially when dealing with compressible ingredients such as flour.

The first mixing, using the paddle attachment.

A close up of the dough at this stage. Once all the ingredients are mixed, it’s time to switch to the dough hook.

Here’s the dough after kneading it with the dough hook. You can see it is smooth and springy.

Another close up of the dough, this time after kneading.

Then the dough gets transferred to an oiled bowl and then put into the fridge.

Here’s the dough a day later. It’s roughly doubled in size.

A close up of the dough in the bowl with its growing air pockets.

The dough gets transferred out onto a floured surface after resting at room temperature for a few hours.

Gently flattening out the dough so that it can be properly divided.

The dough gets divided in half and then each half into thirds. Yielding six loaves.

The dough gets stretched and shaped and transferred to parchment.

The oven gets prepared with a heavy metal pan (in this case a cast iron frying pan) to help generate steam. Right when putting the bread in pour hot water into the pan and shut the oven door to generate steam.

Then the bread bakes, three at a time.

The bread is finished!

A close up of the blistered crust.

One of the “eyes” of a baguette.

A close up of the varied crumb of the finished baguette.