Buttery Wisdom

I have a tenuous relationship with brioche, that indulgent, fattening French bread—a bread which Wikipedia describes as "highly enriched". Highly enriched, for the layperson, means "having a 1 to 1 ratio of butter and eggs to flour." My mother, in contrast, is some sort of brioche magician. She seemed to conjure golden and perfectly-risen loaves with little effort whenever I blithely requested their presence for a French food day in high school. She may discount this memory but I hold it dear and true all the same.

I have stood beside her—I have existed in the kitchen—while she made brioche. I am sure I even "helped." But however sticky the dough, I retained not the magic. I inherited her recipe at some point during college, hoping, perhaps, to impress some lady with my French baking skills, but misplaced the journal in which the recipe was transcribed.

Even before the lost journal, my attempts with that recipe were lackluster. Yes, there was obviously a truckload of butter in the bread I produced, but did it rise well? Was it brioche? I'd have to say no. Did I leaven any romance? Please see previous response.

I've stayed away from this, the fabled unicorn of breads, for some time. Sure, I eat brioche, as produced by bakers (those bastards, with their fancy hats and professional skills). But. BUT! This last weekend I decided that I would offer brioche to my Thanksgiving meal. (Hubris is I.) And so last night and this morning I undertook an exploratory attempt.

I considered Bittman's How to Cook Everything brioche but was deterred immediately by the inclusion of only one stick of butter. One stick? Even I knew better! Joy of Cooking was next and offered a bit better: two sticks of butter. Then I tried Epicurious, and I found Golden Brioche, trumping all with three sticks of butter. Yes. Very yes.

I feel, at my advanced age and with the clear head that only comes from total lack of romance to leaven, that I was able to learn more from this attempt than those of the past. I'd like to share some of the wisdom I gained.

1. Warm milk or warm water are way hotter than I expected. Was that confusing? In other words, warm is apparently defined as 105 – 115 degrees Fahrenheit, requiring near infinite trips between ten seconds of microwave and Deirdre's milk thermometer. Warm liquid equals properly reactive yeast.
2. A KitchenAid mixer is a bread dough deathtrap. The mixer will triumph, and save you considerable work, but the dough will attempt to escape by climbing the dough hook and gumming up the mixer mechanics. Repel said attempts with a wooden spoon or spatula, sometimes both.
3. More butter is always the answer. Butter makes it better. Fat is where flavor lives. Should I continue?
4. Every brioche recipe—except perhaps my mother's—includes chilling the dough over night. If you have read a recipe without this step, you read the recipe incorrectly. Go back, check the last sentence of the middle paragraph. See? I told you.
5. Your apartment, I mean, my apartment is too cold. The shaped loaves (or rolls) will not rise before baking without a bit of extra motivation. By extra motivation, I mean a barely warmed oven or the radiator the size of a sow in the corner of my dining room.
6. Baking brioche makes your kitchen and connected rooms smell like heaven.
7. A full loaf will retain more moisture than individual rolls, especially small ones. However, small rolls, and baking many of them, will allow you to eat more brioche within the first hour without feeling guilty… but the math is a little easier for how much butter you're getting in one bite.
8. You cannot have too much butter in one bite.

So, all that being said, I am quite happy with The Best (and Only, shhhh) Brioche I Baked in 2008. Wait, that's right! This is the Best Brioche I Have Ever Baked (Without My Mother). Behold its wonder! Behold its… having risen!

If I have not had a heart attack from rapid butter consumption, and if I am not killed by turkeys tomorrow, brioche and I will dance again. Its magic is back in my life and, for this week at least, I can feel the knead of its dough down in soul. Or maybe that's the butter in my gut. Only my mother knows for sure.