Brioche Crown

I borrowed a bread book from the library called "Natural yeast 100% health homemade bread, famous store deco" (名店面包大公开). In Chinese, it means "Famous bakery's secrets" and it sounds good, isn't it? When I flipped through the contents, it has those step by step guide, and the chef was a Japanese. Don't we all adore Japanese foods?

Now, the flip side, the book is in Chinese. No English, just pure Chinese. And of course, I borrowed it because I saw that there are step by step guides, so it can't be too difficult right? Unfortunately, in most of the recipes, it uses 麦芽精. Now what the heck is that? Loosely translated, it is actually maltose extract. Where in Singapore can we find maltose extract? Well, not being disheartened, I realised that the portion of maltose extract used is only 2g for 800g of flour. So that means, I can safely omit this in my baking?

So I boldly proceeded with one of the recipe. I'm not one who dares to trent the unknown when it comes to baking actually. This is for fear that if it doesn't work out, I'll have to discard all the ingredients, which I view will be very wasteful. And so, I made my own translation of the ingredients and started to make Brioche.

According to Wikipedia, Brioche is a highly enriched French pastry, whose high egg and butter content give it a rich and tender crumb. It is "light and slightly puffy, according to the proportion of butter and eggs. It is made in the same basic way as bread, but has the richer aspect of a pastry because of the extra addition of eggs, butter, liquid and occasionally a bit of sugar."

Now, when I saw the quantity of the eggs and the butters used, I was shocked! But knowing that this is brioche I'm making, I went along and follow the recipe to the dot. I'll have to admit the last step of incorporating the butter was a total mess! Instead of mixing, the melted butter was splatting all over the mixing bowl and the dough was separately in lumps. It was a terrible sight. Then I tried using my hands to knead them for a while, but with no avail. Finally, I used a drainer to drain out the remaining butter. Then, the dough finally incorporated! Whew! For a moment, I thought there goes my ingredients!

It went through the normal proofing process, and finally had them baked! The brioche turned out to be really fragrant, soft and puffy! It was really nice on its own, especially when toasted lightly.

I'm sharing this recipe, and hoping that someone who had tried this, can share if there is anything wrong with the butter composition, or the method that I used. I checked through some brioche recipe and found that actually, the butter percentage (vs flour) was alright. Or it could likely be the way I mix it that it caused the butter to split from the dough.

Recipe for Brioche Crown, adapted from 名店面包大公开, pg 26.
Makes 12 large buns (recipe below is halved of the original recipe)

Ingredients

Pre-fermented dough
100g Bread flour
1.5g Instant Yeast
2g Salt
65g Whole milk

Method:

1. Mix milk and yeast first.
2. Then add flour and salt.
3. Mix well to incorporate into a dough.
4. Refrigerate it at 5C for 12-18hours. Otherwise, place it at 27C for 2 hours.

Main dough
400g Bread flour
50g Caster sugar
10g Milk powder
300g Whole eggs, beaten
10g Instant yeast
8g Salt
250g Unsalted butter, softened (I used up about 220g only, after I drained them out)

Method:

• In your mixer bowl, mix flour, sugar and milk powder together.
• Add the eggs (and 1g Maltose extract if you have) to the flour.
• Mix well. Leave it to stand for 30mins. At this stage, the dough is very sticky.
• Tear out the pre-fermented dough into small pieces and add it to the main dough, together with yeast and salt.

• Knead into a smooth dough.
• Then add in the butter. [At this stage, I add in all at the same time. Maybe it's good to add them in batches]
• Knead until it pass the window pane test. Then leave it to proof for 60mins. [Mine was ready after 45mins].
• Divide the dough into 12 equal portions. [Actually the size was really huge after baking. So 16 pieces might be just nice].

• Let it proof for another 30-45mins. [I proof mine for 45mins].
• Then use a scissor to snip patterns on the bun.

• Bake at preheated oven of 190C for 12-13mins, or until it turned brown.