My friend Bev asked me if I had a recipe for brioche and I had one squirreled away since May 2007 when I tore one out of the Food & Home Entertaining magazine. This takes a bit of effort and you need a free standing mixer as you cannot do this by hand. This needs to prove overnight so make sure you have the time to wait.
Brioche
Makes enough for: 1 brioche
Ingredients
For the brioche
- 600 g flour, sifted, divided
- 2 mls fine salt
- 50 mls fructose
- 7 eggs, at room temperature
- 170 g softened butter, cubed
For the glaze
- 1 egg mixed with 5mls water
Method
For the yeast
- warm the milk and add the yeast and the fructose
For the brioche
- put 500g flour into the bowl of your mixer
- sieve in the salt and fructose
- turn on the mixer and add the yeast mixture
- add the eggs one at a time making sure that each egg is mixed in well, before adding the next one
- continue mixing until the dough starts to come away from the bowl
- add the butter and mix in well
- you may need to add some more flour at this stage - the dough needs to be soft but not sticky
- turn on to a well floured surface and knead until soft and smooth
- place into a bowl and cover
- allow to rise for at least 2 hours in a warm place until doubled in size
- remove the dough from the bowl and knock back on a lightly floured surface
- put the dough back into the bowl and cover
- allow to prove for at least 5 hours in a cool place, or your fridge
- preheat the oven to 200° Celsius
- grease and flour your chosen bread moulds - traditionally a brioche is made in a fluted mould
- half fill each mould with the dough - for a traditional look, make a dent in the middle of the mould and place a small ball of dough in the dent
- if you do not use a mould, you can braid the dough, or shape it into a ring or loaaf shape
- brush lightly with the glaze and prove for 30 minutes
- bake until golden for between 15 and 20 minutes, depending on the size
Notes
you can freeze the brioche for up to a month. remove from your freezer and bake wrapped in foil for 20 minutes at 150° Celsius. use the raw dough to make beef en croûte or deep fry to make rissoles.
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Ingredients for my brioche:
- Yeast – I use instant dried yeast for all my recipes, unless it calls for fresh yeast. This you can buy from the bakery at most supermarkets that bake their own bread. Check the best by date as this is critical when using yeast.
- Milk – I use UHT full cream milk in my recipes as this is what we use most often at home.
- Fructose – I use fructose as I am sucrose intolerant. All my recipes are gram for gram replaceable with sugar.
- Flour – in South Africa our cake flour is what I use when I refer to flour. This is not the same as cake flour or all-purpose flour around the world, but whatever you use for cakes will suffice. I use only stone ground flour as I prefer the quality.
- Salt – I use salt sourced from the Kalahari Desert. It is very salty so my recipes accommodate this. Adjust seasoning to suit your palate for savoury dishes only.
- Eggs – I buy free range extra-large eggs which in South Africa weigh between 59 and 66 grams (shell on weight).
- Butter – I use unsalted butter for my recipes, unless stated. If you use salted butter be sure to adjust the amount of salt you add to the recipe.
Thanks, you just reminded me to go and pick up the kitkes I ordered for Chelsea’s party tonight!
Friday greets to The Hunk 😉
hope the party is fun 🙂 and Friday greets back 🙂
🙁 Another wonderful recipe that I will have to wait to make until I get home.
🙂 Mandy
your to do list is getting as long as mine 🙂