Let Them Eat Brioche

This week's offering is a famously rich, delicate, buttery bread called brioche.  Legend has it that Marie Antoinette's famous last words, "Let them eat cake," should actually be translated "Let them each brioche."  After trying this decadent bread, I can definitely understand why that notion would have been so out of touch.  The first time I cut myself a slice, I discovered that the bread is so packed with butter that left an oily residue on my fingers.  I had to wash my hands after every slice, lest I leave greasy fingerprints all over my apartment!

The finished brioche

In fact, brioche is so rich in butter that it approaches a pastry dough.  Pastry chefs will sometimes use brioche dough in place of a more traditional short-crust pastry as the shell for a fruit tart.  This gives an unexpected texture to the tart, and the more flavorful bread can make for a delightful variation on a fruity, summer dessert.

The Bread Baker's Apprentice contains three different brioche recipes with varying proportions of butter to flour.  The traditional brioche contains about 0.8 parts butter to one part flour.  I opted for the slightly less rich (but still decadent!) option that Peter Reinhardt called "Middle Class Brioche."  My loaf has a butter-to-flour ratio of 0.5:1, which was still enough to leave my fingers buttery after each slice I ate.  The book also includes a "Poor Man's Brioche", which is yet farther down on the butter-to-flour scale.

Like the bagels from last week, most of the work on the dough happened on the first day of a two-day bake. The dough is built from a simple sponge.  The sponge carries a larger than usual amount of yeast, because the heavy dose of butter and eggs in the dough retards the rising process, so the dough needs extra lift to compensate.  In the "Middle Class Brioche" that I made, the sponge also needed a fairly long proofing time to get the yeasts active and reproducing before assembling the dough.

The mixing process for the brioche is fairly simple, and the slack, butter-rich nature of the mix means that kneading would an exercise in frustration.  As a result, the finished dough goes straight into the refrigerator for an overnight chill.  This hardens the butter again and makes the dough easier to shape.

The shaped dough, prior to the final prove

The next day, the cold dough is shaped and baked.  The Bread Baker's Apprentice recommended several different shaping options, including rolls and classic brioche à tête.  The latter are formed in specialized molds that I don't own, so I opted for a non-traditional shape: the cottage loaf.  I formed the dough into balls with a mass ratio of 2:1 and assembled them as you see at left.  It quickly became apparent to me that brioche dough is too soft and buttery to sustain that shape.  Even before the prove really got started, the balls began to flatten out, and that process continued during the rising process.  If I ever try brioche again, I'll probably opt for simple rolls, but a more photogenic shaping choice will definitely need much smaller top sections.

The proved loaves, prior to baking

The high butter content of the dough meant that the final prove took about twice as long as a plain, white-flour dough.  As I foreboded once I'd finished shaping the dough, the risen loaves (at right) turned out relatively flat.  It doesn't make for a particularly pretty presentation, and the look was also marred by my haste to get the risen loaves into the oven.  Brioche dough is supposed to receive an egg wash prior to going into the oven.  This helps produce the distinctive shine that marks enriched doughs.  Regrettably, I forgot the egg wash entirely, so finished loaves (top) have a beautiful, golden-brown color, but they have quite a flat finish compared to a properly prepared brioche.

Next time, I'll be preparing an Italian variation on brioche called casatiello.  It's an enriched dough that also includes cheese and chunks of cured meat.  I'm a vegetarian, so I'm going to be trying a meatless alternative.  Let's hope it's as tasty as the original sounds!

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