Said to have hailed from the Normandy region of France, brioche is a decadent bread with a dynamic roster of uses. Cinnamon rolls, pain suisse, pain aux raisin, bostock, galette des rois, and a traditional hamburger bun all use this classic brioche dough as their base, making this recipe a strong ally in your baking repertoire.
We are going to focus on using the recipe for a classic Pullman loaf. It’s the perfect, slightly sweet sandwich bread toasted and smothered in mayo for the classic Southern tomato sandwich or a BLT. My favorite use is as the base of toad in a hole, eggs in a frame, or whatever you choose to call that bread-y breakfast with a fried egg in the middle. However you decide to use the bread, be sure to enjoy a slice right out of the oven and taste that buttery, yeasty freshness.
When making brioche, we get out what we put in, especially in terms of fats. Brioche will truly shine when you use quality butter, as well as healthy, happy farm eggs and good milk.
Poolish is the leavening agent in this recipe. You might also see it called biga or preferment. It is an active dry yeast fermentation agent that adds a nice little whammy of leavening, allowing the brioche to come out soft and fluffy. The addition of active dry yeast dissolved into the wet ingredients acts as another leavening booster that you really don’t want to go without.
Finally, when mixing the dough, it really is crucial to mix in your room-temperature butter (it should have the consistency of stiff mayonnaise) after all the other ingredients have been mixed. That final, incremental incorporating of butter allows the fat to evenly coat the gluten molecules, giving us a strong, yet soft and supple, loaf of bread.
Ingredient quantities for this recipe are listed in grams because breads are most efficiently and consistently produced using weight measurements instead of volume. If you don’t own a scale, you can purchase this essential baking equipment for about $12.
Brioche Dough
To make the brioche dough, you will need to first make a poolish. The process will take at least 1 hour or up to overnight in the refrigerator.
Sarah Dodge is an Atlanta-based bread baker, pastry chef and baking instructor. She is the owner of Bread is Good, which offers bread subscriptions to the general public and wholesale baked goods to local markets and restaurants.
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