The title pretty much sums it up. Today I made Julia Child's brioche. And it was good. I bought a reprint of her French Chef cookbook, originally published in 1963. I don't usually buy new books, but it was only $7 and it's Julia, you can't say no to Julia.
There aren't too many bread recipes in this book, mostly pastries and crepes, tons of recipes with crepes. I contemplated making croissants, but I'm too scared. I will soon though. It can't be that hard, right? So, instead I decided on brioche. I think I like brioche, I've only had it once before and cannot really remember it. Ron loves brioche, so why not try it?
Luckily I have my KitchenAid, and didn't have to make the dough by hand. I made the dough as directed, without the butter at first, beating it in the mixer for about 4 or 5 minutes.
While that mixed, I followed Julia's instructions in beating the butter on the counter with a rolling pin until softened. That was kind of fun. I then worked it a little with my fingers to warm it up some. (You can tell I used two different brands of butter for this!)
With the mixer going, I added little bits of butter, every 90 seconds or so, once each pat was incorporated into the dough. Once all of the butter was incorporated, I let it knead more for about five minutes.
Apparently brioche dough needs to knead for a while because of all of the eggs and butter. Julia said to stop kneading once the dough was smooth and no longer sticky, but even after ~15 minutes of kneading and mixing, the dough was still somewhat sticky. Good enough I think.
I placed the dough in a bowl, cut the top as directed, sprinkled it with a little flour, and put it into my oven to rise, making sure the oven temperature did not rise above 70 degrees, it has something to do with the butter.
I let it rise for two hours, it had doubled in bulk. I punched it down, and placed it in the fridge for the second rise. That took about 90 minutes. Julia suggests 4 hours, but it had almost doubled again after 90 and I was afraid of an over-rise situation.
The recipe states that it will make one large brioche, or 8 muffin sized ones. I decided to use my mini loaf pan since it has 8 cups. I deflated the dough a little, shaped each piece into a little log, and placed them in the pan, letting them rise on the kitchen counter (my kitchen was about 58 degrees today, I know, too cold for most). After about an hour, they were ready for the oven. (I should be talking about how I glazed the tops with an egg white wash, but I forgot to do it, that's why they aren't as shiny as they should be.)
They baked at 475 degrees for 16 minutes. At about 12 minutes I checked on them, and noticed they were already very brown, so I tented them with aluminum foil for the last 4 minutes. They came out really well. Ron ate 2 as soon as they were cool enough to eat. I liked them, I didn't love them. I think it's the egg content. It's the same reason I don't think I enjoy popovers like most people. But when I spread a little nutella on a piece, that made me like it MUCH more! All in all, this recipe was pretty easy to make. However, I don't know that I would recommend making it without a mixer. The dough is too sticky and if I made it by hand, I would have been tempted to add more flour to it.
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