Fluffy Brioche Bread Recipe
If there's one thing always true, is how versatile Brioche Bread is. You can have it with jam, cream, butter, chocolate of course, but it also works really well with foie gras and terrines.
Ingredients
600gr of Flour
1 Egg
250ml of Milk
100ml Fresh Cream
100g Sugar
25g Butter melted and cooled
5g Dry Yeast
10g Salt
Cinnamon, lemon peel, orange peel (to your taste)
To decorate
1 Yolk
1 tsp Milk for brushing
Method
In a large bowl, sift 100g of the total flour mixed with dry yeast, then add 100ml of milk taken from the total. Mix until you get a sticky dough, cover with cling film and leave to rise in a warm place for 75 minutes. We turned on the oven for a few minutes, at about 25-30°C, to create a warm but stable environment.
Meanwhile, you can work at the rest of the dough. Sift the remaining 500g of Manitoba Flour in a bowl, add the milk and cream at room temperature, and sugar. If you have any additional flavouring such as cinnamon, lemon or orange peel, add it now.
Knead to form a soft dough, then add the egg until this is completely blended, and then the melted butter and the initial preparation with the yeast. When the dough no longer sticks to the bowl, add the fine salt. Overturn the dough on surface and start folding like a wallet, this will increase the dough elasticity, to a point when the dough will not break anymore.
Form a ball, cover with cling film and leave to rise at 25-30°C until the dough triples in volume. It can take 2-4h depending on the temperature of the oven and strength of the flour.
Once ready, you'll have about 1.2kg of dough. We used a pretty large tin and could fit it right away, but you can also divide in half and bake them separately. We made 7 balls of 170g each, and positioned them in a 4-3 row arrangement. Cover with cling film and let rise at 25-30°C and when the brioche reaches the edges of the tin, lightly brush with the egg yolk and milk mix.
Let rise for another 1 hour until the domes come out from the edge, then brush with the rest of the yolk and milk. Bake at 180°C in the middle of the oven for about 20-25 minutes. Keep an eye on it as if it gets too dark too quickly, the oven might be too hot. You may want to lower the rack in the oven, or open it a little to let the temperature come down. Check with a skewer that it's cooked inside (it must come out clean), and when ready turn off the oven, open it and let rest.
Carefully remove from the tin, and cover in icing sugar or as is. We personally prefer to pull the bread starting from the top of the dome, rather than cut slices.. but this is our personal preference!
