**Adventures In Baking** The Thing About Brioche

 I woke up the night before last with a sudden anxiety attack. I haven't been able to calm down since. Today, I tried to soothe myself by baking. My anxiety abated only to be replaced with extreme frustration. The good thing is, I was finally able to laugh. But I didn't know what I was laughing about. (Does laughing about nothing make sense? I don't know.) Since I felt like I might be losing a little bit of my mind, I decided to try some baking therapy.

My goal was to make my first brioche loaves. The general plan was to make one plain - maybe with some sesame seeds on top - and the other with a lemony cream cheese swirl throughout. That sounded a little bit ambitious - plus, every recipe I found calls for a lot of eggs. I decided to just start with plain brioche.

The recipe I found via a YouTube video was simple enough. And I had all the tools and ingredients needed. 

Six eggs, people. SIX!

Leave it to me to screw up a simple recipe.

First issue:

The video cook obviously has a really nice stand mixer - or at least one with a really good motor. I have a very decent 4-quart Hamilton Beach with a 300-watt motor. It's a nice little mixer, no doubt about it. I have never had trouble doing any of the cakes and basic bread dough that I am familiar with. However, brioche is not your "basic" dough and I am not familiar with it.

Brioche is a very wet and sticky dough that requires a LOT of kneading. The video cook warned about that, saying not to attempt using anything but a stand mixer (and one day I'm going to look into how brioche was made before people had good mixers). Her directions are to knead at "low" speed for anywhere from 10 up to as long as 20 minutes, depending. Let's focus on the words "low" and "depending".

On my mixer, the bread hook is to be used on "low" - meaning Speed 1. That made sense to me so that is what I used. And used and used and used. For almost an hour. My dough never did pass the "window pane" test. Since my mixer was starting to feel very warm, I decided to be happy with the dough pulling easily away from the sides of the bowl. For another 10 minutes (past the hour mark), I ran the mixer at speeds somewhere between 2.5 and 3 - which is the speed I should have been using from the start (or not). By the time the dough was easily pulling away from the sides, my poor mixer was straining like the little engine that couldn't.

Now, I guess "depending" means depending on whether or not you have a mixer with a motor stronger than 300 watts. I'm not sure how strong a motor has to be to properly work this kind of dough. 

Just a little less wet & sticky than
cake batter!

For the first proof - the "warm proof" - my still-sticky dough went into an oiled bowl for an hour. Because I always keep my apartment on the cool side, I put the dough in the oven at what some people call the "light-on point". My oven doesn't have an actual light so I just turned the knob until I heard the first little click. That means my oven is on and will warm slightly but not (hopefully) get hot enough to damage the yeast.

Second issue:

When I checked the proofing at 30 minutes, I thought that my yeast must have gone bad.

An hour into the proofing, my dough looked as if it had only risen the very slightest amount. Was that right? I don't know because this is my first brioche. I went and scanned the internet, got overwhelmed, then I called my brother. I'm kind of irritated that my brother knew that brioche doesn't rise like "regular" dough. I have no idea what that means but at this point, I am not messing around anymore with this damned dough.

I punched down the dough (which did not seem necessary), and put it into the fridge for the second rise - the long, "cold-proof".

Can I just say that I do not understand cold-proofing dough? The only time I've ever put any dough in the fridge is when I want to slow down the proofing. So at this point, I am frustrated and very confused on top of which I feel really stupid. The only reason I kept going is that I'd had to use 6 eggs and eggs are extremely expensive right now. People, my head hurt so badly and I felt like an idiot. I just knew that I was screwing up this recipe. And I'd used my last 6 eggs.

Anyway.

When it was time to take the dough out of the fridge I realized something. I keep my fridge cold. Very cold. I went to pull the dough out of the bowl to shape 12 pieces and realized how freaking cold it was. I was pretty sure that I'd almost frozen it. But, once my fingers warmed it during shaping, it was still slightly sticky!

Boy, boy, boy...

At this point, I'm too far in to quit. I go ahead and shape the dough and layer it in the loaf pans to proof them for two and a half hours. I set a timer for 30 minutes so I can check on the proofing.

After thirty minutes, I realize that my kitchen may be too cool for the dough to proof. I didn't want to turn up my heat or run the oven so I was trying to think of a different (and more cost-effective) way to generate some warmth. First thought: heat some water in the Ninja to add to hot tap water. I could set the pans over the sinkful of warm water. That sounded like a lot of hassle and I was worn out from this whole ordeal. 

Now, here is where I have to pat myself on the back. As dumb as I often feel these days, I have flashes of real ingenuity. This is what I came up with.

Those are my loaf pans sitting on a heating pad ( set to Low) and under a damp kitchen towel. Genius, I tell you.

So after two and half hours -

Gawl-lee!

- my loaves had risen wonderfully. Well, at least, better than I'd expected them to rise...

Man! I was so happy. I was thinking that, even if my brioche doesn't turn out awesome this first time, I am learning so much about the dough.

I added some toasted  white sesame seeds

Now here is something about brioche and timing: decide how late you want to be up dealing with the dough. I should have started the process much earlier (or later) in the day. Or just late enough that I could fridge-proof the dough overnight. As it turned out, I didn't want the dough to be in the fridge for too long so I kept going and wasn't able to get the bread into the oven until after eleven. But I have insomnia anyway so...

Well, how did the bread come out? Not bad at all, my friends!

At this point, my apartment smells amazing and some of my anxiety has gone away. I am so proud of this bread that I could cry. The only thing is I am not supposed to eat anything until in the morning because I am doing IF. But... I might have to cheat and have just a taste of the bread before I seal it up for freezing. I will be back to finish this post once I've had my first taste.

NEXT DAY...

... I did have a taste because I was so excited for one of my neighbors to try it. It's nothing like the super-soft and buttery brioche I buy from Aldi but it wasn't awful. It was more bread-like than I thought it should be. My neighbor (who is more honest and unfiltered than a 5-year-old) said that it had a "beautiful" taste but was a little bit dry. As they say on the GBBO, I'll take that. 

I am ashamed to admit that I showed off some pictures to friends and family on Facebook. I decided that I would save my beautiful-tasting "but a little bit dry" brioche to better use as the base for bread pudding.

Yay! I did it. I made brioche and I didn't totally screw it up. I will try to make a lemon cream cheese-filled version next time. I still owe my little brother a birthday treat anyway.

Peace

--Free

P.S.: Since I first wrote this post, I did attempt the filled version. It did not go well because my poor mixer died during the kneading process. One minute, it was chugging right along and the next minute it began to sound like it had developed emphysema. The bread hook was barely turning. I tried to finish kneading by hand (impossible to do, by the way) and just ended up going through the rest of the process with the dough as it was. Result? It smelled great but it was barely proofed. I couldn't really work with the dough during the shaping process and... after baking, half the dough was a melted mess of ick.

When my niece called me, I told her that I'd changed my Christmas gift wish. Hopefully, I get a replacement (but stronger) mixer this year...