Brioche

It is a freezing day outside, which means that I am looking for any excuse I can get to turn on the oven and make my apartment a little warmer. My excuse of choice: brioche.

For those of you unfortunate enough to never have experienced brioche allow me to spoil it for you before you get too excited. The hero of this recipe: BUTTER. Brioche is the most buttery bread you can get before flour becomes a straight-up pastry.

The recipe that I use comes from Shirley Corriher brilliant book, CookWise.  I know is a bit of a cheap trick that I am not including the recipe, but since it is in a cookbook I would prefer not making any authors upset. Now I have read other bloggers commentaries on her book and there are some doubters out there because the dough is challenging. It is very soft and sticky.  The solution to this is just dusting your hands with a little bit of flour and form the cylinders in Shirley’s recipes.

I have had great success with this recipe. I have even received such impressive complements as, “This is really good brioche, and I should know. I am French.” (As if italics could make a French accent.)

In an effort to make this brioche more versatile and accessible, I augment the original recipe by presenting you with the option of brioche muffins. To make these little beauties, grease your muffin pan (or if you are feeling super lazy, use cupcake liners) and fill them ½ to ¾ of the way up with the dough. When you set it out to rise before putting it in the oven it will almost double, so you need to make sure you are leaving room for the expansion.  These little brioches will cook in 20 minutes at 375 degrees to an internal temperature of 180 F.

Now in this beautiful presentation photograph I have included truffle butter (because the brioche just needs more butter) and strawberry freezer jam.*

*Comment below if you want to see posts on the beauty of truffle butter and freezer jam.