by A.J. Coltrane

A brioche for the Pet Store Guy:

What’s interesting is that one side expanded more than the other side. Again:

The slash was down the middle when I made it — that’s how far the “center” shifted as the bread expanded.

So why did one side rise more than the other?

My first thought would be that the pan needs a lot of butter — any “dry” spots catch on the sides and imbalance the loaf. But it’s happened two tries in a row…

It could be that if any egg wash touches the sides of the pan it makes for an uneven rise…

Alternately, I may be misinterpreting the directions. I’m folding such that the seams run lengthwise inside the loaf. It may be that if I fold so that the seams are crosswise… I’d bet that the same “problem” would persist, only one end would rise more than the other instead…

Of course it could be as simple as “stuff happens”. I thought the first bread was slashed well, but it looks like the slash could have been deeper on the 2nd bread.

I don’t know. It could be different combinations of factors in each loaf.

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Parting thoughts:

I’m going to have to try more recipes from the Beranbaum book. My feeling is that this particular recipe could be worded better. I think I did everything right, but I spent a whole bunch more time than usual reading the recipe. I think bits and pieces of the recipe are spread around somewhat, and the ingredients are lumped together in a non-intuitive way. I wound up annotating in the book for future reference, which I something I don’t like to do. However, I really like the fact that the measurements are available as metric weights.

All in all, this brioche represents a two day process involving five hours of “work” each day, handling the dough every 1-2 hours. As a flat guess I was “hands on” for more than an hour each day.

In the future:  I’d like to hope it’s possible to get a comparable result without that many steps, but for special occasions, it’s a nice bread.

 

by A.J. Coltrane

For Thanksgiving I thought I’d try baking Beranbaum’s Bread Bible Basic Brioche.

The recipe is here on Epicurious. The process involves many steps, and I had to re-read it multiple times to parse what she really meant and to make sure that I had the timing right. (For the “loaf”, use Steps 1-6, then skip down to Step 7 in “variations”. Plan to start 1-2 days ahead of when you intend to bake the bread.)

I thought it came out well. Here’s the crumb. (Note the white tablecloth… it was a “nice” dinner):

The loaf prior to slicing. The far side didn’t rise quite as much as the near side:

I used the “optional” eggwash, which is why the top is so shiny.

The recipe makes one 8-1/2″ x 4-1/2″ x 4-1/2″ loaf. That gave me a chance to use a smallish loaf pan that I’ve had forever, but only ever used for marinading or mixing things:

I’ve had that pan so long that I have no idea where it came from. I think I might have inherited it from one of a zillion previous roommates.

As a bonus, the No Knead breads decided to be cooperative too. I used half AP flour, and half Bread flour. One of the breads split along the slashes, the other was very craggy… rustic!

 

Thanks for Iron Chef Leftovers for the invite and the terrific dinner, and to everyone for the great Thanksgiving company.