Sunday brunch – homemade brioche

We had freshly baked brioche for brunch this morning. It was melt-in-the-mouth delicious, and very, very light. I made the dough yesterday, so all I had to do was pop it in the oven when I got up.

Brioche

I used Paul Hollywood’s recipe from ‘how to bake’. It is seriously good. I’ve made a few recipes from the book now, and all have worked perfectly and taste great.

You will need:

500g strong, white flour

7g of salt

50g of castor sugar

10g of instant yeast

140ml of warm, full fat milk

5 medium eggs

250g of soft, unsalted butter

Get your mixer out, and add the flour to the bowl. Put the salt and sugar to one side and the yeast to the other. Pour in the milk and the eggs, and mix on a slow setting for about two minutes. Turn up the power to medium and mix at this speed for another 6-8 minutes, until your dough is elastic and soft.

Cut your butter up into squares and add this to the dough, mixing it well for about another five minutes. Stop the mixer every now and again to scrape down the sides. Make sure that the butter is well mixed though. Your dough should be smooth and very soft. I’ve been trying to think of what the texture is like. This was my first time making a rich dough. All I can think of is, it reminds me of soft butter. The colour and smell were divine, and the texture was very soft.

Tip the dough into a plastic container. I’m usually quite open to interpreting recipes (sometimes very liberally), but the recipe says a plastic container, so I followed it to the letter. I don’t know if you could keep it in the mixing bowl and get the same results (mine is metal). If you know better than I do, let me know in the comments below! Cover the dish and chill it for at least seven hours.

After the seven hours, the dough had metamorphasised. The squishy dough had firmed up significantly and it was much easier to manipulate.

You’ll need to grease a 25cm round tin at this stage. It doesn’t need to be lined.

Flour your work surface and tip your dough out onto it. Fold it over onto itself a couple of times to knock some of the air out. Divide it into nine similar-sized pieces. Eight of these can go around the edge of your tin, and the ninth goes into the centre.

Balls of brioche, ready to prove

Cover this with a clean plastic bag or clingfilm and leave it to prove for another 2-3 hours. I did all of this on Saturday afternoon and left the dough to prove overnight in my kitchen. Your dough should rise again.

When you’re ready to bake, heat your oven to 190°c. Bake your dough for 20-30 minutes – mine took about 35 minutes. When it’s done, put it on a wire rack to cool for a bit. We ate ours still warm from the oven with raspberry jam.

Baked brioche