Too Easy Brioche

You definitely don’t need brioche to be this easy.  I don’t need brioche to be this easy.  But sadly (who am I kidding–woohoo!) it really, really is.  Brioche is a beautiful “enriched” dough, which means it has butter and eggs making it richer.  And boy does it.  Where some of my other breads are breadier–they have glorious air holes and lovely chewy texture, brioche is tender.  Generally, it has a uniform structure inside with a lovely crumb that could be mistaken for cake at first glance.  But it is definitely bread.  A lovely bread that is fabulous with…yeah, you guessed it.  Butter.  But it also makes an incredible french toast or bread pudding.  The dough can also be used as a base for cinnamon rolls, or many other pastry types of incarnations.

This recipe is the basic Brioche dough from Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day.  But this is halved so you can make two loaves.  Two loaves is a bit of an easier investment when you are first making a recipe.  The beauty of this recipe is, not only does it take, as advertised, about 5 minutes to stir together, the dough stays in the fridge for several days.  It is very easy to fit into a busy working/family/modern life schedule.

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Too Easy Brioche

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup water warm, but not hot to the touch.  Under 110 degrees F if using your instant-read thermometer.
  • 1 3/4  teaspoons yeast
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt I use Morton salt--and it tends to be saltier than diamond
  • 5 eggs total, 4 eggs at room temperature for the bread, plus an additional egg for an egg wash before baking
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 3/4 cup or 1.5 sticks butter, melted and cooled to room temp or slightly warmer
  • 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

Instructions

  1. Mix everything (4 of the eggs--the other is for the egg wash, so save that for later!) but the flour together in a larger bowl until the eggs and honey are well incorporated.  Dump in the flour and stir together.  It will look kind of lumpy and a lovely dark yellow color from the eggs and the honey.  Make sure the flour is fully incorporated and the bread is fully together, albeit very sticky.  Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temp for two hours.  After two hours, put the covered dough in the fridge.  So easy right?
  2. As soon as the dough is chilled, it is usable, but you can leave this dough in the fridge for up to 5 days (what?)  This means you can plan Saturday breakfast Monday night...just in case you ever have a case of the Mondays.  You will feel like a boss with this in your fridge at your beck and call.  Promise.
  3. When you are ready to bake your bread remove it from the fridge.  The trick is to work with the dough when it is cold because it is very very sticky and you want to avoid adding too much additional flour as you work with it.  When you are ready to bake your loaf, you simply take out half the dough, shape it into a rough loaf shape by stretching and rolling it slightly under and placing it seam side down in a well-buttered loaf pan.  If you are feeling very Parisian that day, give Brioche Nanterre a try.  It is isn't scary at all.   You simply take 1/2 the dough and separate it into about 6-8 balls of similar size.  Then you place them in the well-buttered loaf pan in two rows.
  4. Next, no matter the shape you decide on comes another rest/rise.  You need to give your brioche about 2 hours or more until the dough no longer feels chilled and it has risen in the pan.  Obviously, this depends a bit on how warm your house is, but you can judge it.  I tend to rise my dough near my oven if I am doing some other baking to speed the process up a bit, or just as I preheat my oven.  In this case, you want the oven to be 350 degrees F.
  5. Now, take your last egg and beat together with a teaspoon of water.  Use a brush to lightly brush the top of the bread with the egg wash and place in the preheated oven for about 45-50 minutes until golden brown.  Let cool in the pan for about 5 minutes and then remove from the pan and let cool completely on a rack.  It is that easy.  Sorry, not sorry.