Yay! With this first pastry article, each section of the blog will be filled and you won't risk running into a "no results" anymore. OK fine, honestly I cheated a bit because I disabled the "My Favorite Spots" menu (I want to do things properly and those are long articles to write but you won't lose out. You can always follow my instagram to follow my adventures live). So getting back to our recipe, I wanted to start with a traditional brioche simple type CAP.

The brioche process CAP style

Nothing complicated, here's the process:

CREATE: the brioche dough (mechanical kneading)

BULK FERMENTATION

PUNCH: the dough

RESERVE: in the cold (positive or negative)

SHAPE, MOLD

PROOF in the oven

GLAZE

BAKE

RESERVE

All clear? No? OK fine, let's go through all that!

OK I won't lie to you, traditional brioche isn't the easiest thing to work with (then again, everyone has their bugbear and personally I've never had a problem with choux pastry while some people tear their hair out over it).

The equipment needed to make a traditional brioche

Before diving into the matter, a quick note on equipment and ingredients to maximize your chances of success. The dough mixer: not essential but honestly without it, it's a hassle (it's a baker teacher's joke to have their students knead by hand to teach them about life...). I know some people love kneading by hand (personally, I hate it: it's sticky and it gets everywhere...) but after all everyone has their thing: a dough mixer, a bread machine or lots of elbow grease, it's up to you to choose your method!

The lowdown on ingredients

Regarding flour, good bread flour isn't essential but it helps (it helps give the dough body and makes shaping easier). Another helpful tool: a marble slab. Again, it's not essential but if you get a chance to get one it makes life much easier (because plastic countertops that heat up because of the dishwasher underneath is just... um...). You can find them pretty cheap at home improvement stores and if you like working dough it might be worth the investment.

I got mine from my grandfather's treasure trove but the real great find is to contact funeral homes and get scraps for cheap (yes I know it's a bit creepy...). For accessories that seem essential to me (and are super affordable too), I recommend the dough scraper and the bench scraper (which are used respectively to cut cleanly and scrape the dough).

The process to successfully make your traditional brioche

So getting back to the process, we start by mixing the flour, salt, sugar and yeast but be careful, not just any way. Position them "in a triangle" to avoid direct contact between the yeast and the salt or sugar, which would immediately kill our poor yeast before it had a chance to develop. So we do it like this:

You can see in the photo that that's not what I did (yes, do as I say not as I...). Actually, because I don't like to take risks when cooking, I always give the mixer a turn or two before adding my yeast, that way no worries, but you should adopt the method that works for you.

Speaking of yeast, between fresh and dry, you can use either one depending on what you have on hand (fresh is always better of course but dry works very well), the important thing is to respect the proportions correctly (generally 20 g of fresh yeast for 500 g of flour and between 1 and 5% of flour weight for dry). Ideally you should dilute your yeast in a liquid (milk or eggs) to allow it to develop.

Once the dry mixture is well blended, add the eggs (and therefore the yeast if you've diluted it in them) and knead until the dough is very smooth (it can take up to 10 minutes):

Quick note for KitchenAid owners (and maybe other stand mixers but I'm less familiar with them), watch out for your motor! The household models are not designed to handle large loads and I've seen several people training for the CAP whose KA gave up the ghost on a slightly stiff dough. If it's struggling, stop it! And I also recommend not positioning it too close to the edge of a countertop because it moves around quite a bit during kneading.

Once the dough is nice and smooth, add the butter slowly and knead until it's smooth again. The dough starts to come away from the mixer and makes a ploc-ploc-ploc sound...

Remove the brioche dough thus obtained from the mixer and refrigerate for a good hour (this is what we call "reserve in positive cold"). Here, methods differ, some swear by the fridge, others let it rise at room temperature and still others skip this step. I learned to let it rise in the cold, I'll have to test the other methods another time.

How to deflate brioche dough?

Once the dough has risen well, take it out and flatten it firmly to deflate it:

Next, cut the dough into equal portions depending on the desired use (Nanterre brioche, navettes...). For my part, I chose to make a Nanterre brioche (fairly easy to make at home in a loaf pan) and a brioche head (much less easy since it requires a special mold and the execution is often hit or miss).

For the Nanterre, I made 6 balls of 100 grams but that was a bit tight for my loaf pan. For a nice puffy brioche, count more on 110/120 g per ball:

To ball properly, flatten your brioche dough into a circle. Then bring the edges toward the middle to fuse them. Next, flip the dough so the seam is facing down on the work surface. Finally, roll the dough in the palm of your hand to shape it into a ball (neither the dough nor your fingers should leave the work surface).

Once all your dough is balled, shape the brioche according to the desired use. In a quincunx pattern for the Nanterre:

And 4 balls on the outside and one ball in the center for the brioche head (you'll understand why this latter which often tends to rise crooked at baking is called "zizi" brioche by pastry apprentices...)

So at this stage, several solutions. When making brioche, we generally start with a base of 500 g of flour (it's hard to do less to measure the yeast and salt) but this makes a large quantity of cooked dough (2 good big brioches). When I get started, I get in the habit of freezing half the dough. Brioche freezes very well and it's always handy to have a snack or breakfast that only needs to be thawed.

So this time, I sent the Nanterre to proof and the brioche head straight to the freezer (you'll just need to take it out the night before and let it thaw overnight in the fridge before putting it to proof in the usual way).

For the proof, the crucial step of the recipe that is sometimes difficult to achieve at home, I recommend the boiling water bowl in a closed oven method. This allows you to get the ideal temperature for good proofing. Let your brioche rise gently for at least two hours (the dough should double in volume) before glazing it with egg yolk and baking it in a 160°C oven for 45 minutes.

I found the result was a bit dense in flavor (probably a slight lack of proofing on my part) and lacked a touch of sugar but it still goes over very well for a snack with a bit of spread!

Brioche

Camille Pastry