Brioche

France is pretty famous for its bread, the most famous being the baguette, fougasse and brioche. All of which I love, and can eat my weights worth!

The brioche is soft, buttery and slightly sweet. It goes well with savoury foods such as paté or sweet such a Nutella, so is really versatile.

I have a recipe for fougasse bread, check it out:
https://atableavecjulia.blogspot.com/2017/05/fougasse-bread-this-is-relatively-easy.html?m=1

I’ll be making this again as it’s easy, I just have to remember to egg wash the dough before baking to ensure my brioche has that infamous sheen!

Ingredients:

• 225g strong white bread flour 
• 6g salt 
• 15g caster sugar 
• 7g fresh yeast, crumbled 
• 3 eggs 
• 125g softened unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
• 1 egg, beaten to glaze 

Put the flour, salt and sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer. Crumble the yeast into a separate bowl and add the eggs. Whisk the eggs and yeast together to dissolve the yeast. Pour the yeast mixture into the dry ingredients, then, using a dough hook attachment, mix on a medium speed for 5-8 minutes, or until the dough starts coming away from the sides. Turn off the mixture and let the dough rest for 5 minutes. 

Start the mixture up again on a medium speed and while it is running slowly add the butter to the dough, a little at a time, until it is incorporated (it’s important you don’t add the butter too quickly or it will ruin the dough). Once the butter is incorporated, mix on a high speed for 4 minutes, until the dough is glossy, smooth and elastic when pulled, then cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave until it has doubled in size (this will take around 2 hours). Knock back the dough, then recover and leave to chill overnight in the fridge.

The next day, grease a loaf tin. Take the dough out of the fridge, mould it into a loaf shape and place it in the prepared tin, pressing the dough down into each corner so that it is even. Leave somewhere warm to prove until it reaches the top of the tin, this should take around 3 hours.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Glaze the brioche with the beaten egg and bake for 20 minutes, then take it out of the tin and place it directly on the oven shelf for a further 5 minutes. 

Put on a cooling rack to cool a little and serve warm, or toasted. The brioche will last 2-3 days.