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O, this is just my brioche recipe. According to Wikipedia, Brioche is a pastry of French origin that is similar to a highly enriched bread, and whose high egg and butter content give it a rich and tender crumb.
I combined the tangzhong method with brioche. So this bread has the taste of brioche but the texture of soft Japanese bread. Flavourful and palatable!
I looked through the fridge and used whatever is in it to make the brioche today: cream and I had some leftover beaten eggs. At the same time, my weighing scale ran out of battery, so I used spoons and measuring cups instead. So the measurements here reflect that. Note that for brioche, the standard French ratio for flour to butter is 5:1.
These turned out with the outside a bit more like pastry, and the inside still very soft. Great for cinnamon rolls and sweet bread varieties.
The dough is properly proofed if you stick a finger in it and a dent that does not retract forms.
Mrs Lim’s Brioche
Ingredients
Tangzhong Roux
- 1.5 Tbsp Bread Flour
- 7.5 Tbsp Water
Main Bread ingredients
- 115 g Made up of 2 eggs + cream
- 7 g or 11/2 tsp yeast
- 1 tsp Bread Improver optional
- 210 g or 11/2 cups Bread Flour
- 56 g or 1/2 cup Plain Flour
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 30 g or 3 Tbsp Sugar
- 20 g Milk Powder
- 50 g Butter
Instructions
Roux
- Mix flour with water until dissolved, then cook till it reaches 70C. You will know when it has thickened and forms a paste. Do not let it boil.
- Refrigerate or freeze immediately to 3C.
Dough
- Mix everything, including the roux but excluding the butter into a bowl and knead using a machine or by hand until elastic, or about 6 minutes, midway, add the butter. On the thermomix, it is a total of 7.5 minutes on knead mode.
- You can prove this twice. First proof: leave it in a 40C oven to proof until double. It took me an hour. The dough is ready when it leaves a dent that does not retract when a finger is pierced through it.
- If proofing once, then the above step can be skipped, go straight to shaping the dough.
- Shape and then second proof again until double. It took me 45 minutes. This proofing time changes everyday even in the same kitchen as the conditions can be very different.
- Bake at 200C in a fan-forced oven for 9 minutes for small buns, and for loaves, it takes another 30 minutes to proof and 25 minutes to bake,.
- Enjoy them!
A well knead dough looks like a baby’s bottom, smooth and elastic
The dough has finished proving for the first time if you can stick your finger into the dough and it forms a dent that does not retract. It is overproven if it punctures, and it is under proven if the dent does not stay.
Shape into whatever you want
When the shaped dough has doubled, then add topping (like nuts or sugar or salt or cheese.. or anything you fancy) and/or egg wash. Then bake!
If you want to learn how to braid all sorts of challah, 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 all the way to 9 strands, here’s is nice video to help you.
