Saturday Bread - Brioche: December 8 2018

After getting back into my stride last week with a delicious wholemeal loaf, I wanted to try one of the other two settings on my compact bread maker. I'd been dreaming the whole week about making a brioche loaf and, after hunting around a bit, I found two recipes to test.

Source

"Baking your own brioche takes a little effort but it is so worth it. Light and buttery with a pillowy interior."

Alida Ryder at Simply Delicious Food

Brioche is a wonderful concoction of bread enriched with milk, eggs and butter. It is very easy to make in a bread machine and the results are wonderful.

You do need to pay a little attention during the first kneading to ensure all the ingredients are well mixed and there is enough liquid (bread makers tend to need slightly more moisture than dough made by hand), but otherwise you can leave the machine to get on with it.

The main difference between the two recipes is that the first uses about double the quantity of plain flour to strong bread flour and the second recipe uses all strong bread flour.

Recipe: Squander Two This was a fantastically light fragile loaf - it was almost impossible to cut a slice right across the loaf, and I quickly learned that the best (and most attractive) way to cut it was in wedges.

This loaf was so light and airy. The colour of the crust resembled a fresh shiny conker, straight from its husk. I thought it might be tough or crunchy, but it was simply crisp and crumbly. The loaf reminded me of french bread - genuine baguettes, not the doughy lumps we get in English supermarkets.

I applied the butter test, as advised by @akipponn, and enjoyed the bread with some beech and oak smoked salmon from the Co-op. Perfect Saturday lunch.

My second recipe was from the Kenwood website. The one comment advocated making the smallest size loaf (500g), so I did.

Was it possible that this loaf smelled even more delicious than the first one as it was baking? Hard to say, they both smelled fabulous! I intended to add chocolate chips to this one but I was messing about on steemit at the crucial moment and missed my chance.

This was the better loaf, I think. Still light but a little more sturdy than the recipe with plain flour. Both were very good (you would have no trouble eating either), perfect for a holiday continental style breakfast with apricot conserve and fresh, very hot cafetiere coffee, or maybe for dipping into a bowl of hot chocolate (I'd recommend the second loaf if this is your intention).

I'm looking forward to trying both to make french toast and bread and butter pudding - watch out for reviews and feeling envious :) I'm going to use the first loaf as inspiration for next Saturday's baking and experiment with french bread dinner rolls.

Daily Activity, Walking