Middle-Class Brioche

I discovered a new blog I love; The Winter Guest ; or, El invitado de Invierno en Español.  This blogger is a Spanish woman who writes her blog both in English and Spanish- very impressive!  There are many delicious-looking recipes on there; I'm excited to try some of the Spanish ones.  The recipe that first caught my eye was her "Middle-Class Brioche"; called that, because it uses less butter than some brioche recipes (but it still seemed like a lot of butter!)  You can read her original post for more explanation.  I converted her recipe from metric into cups; go to her original recipe for metric.  (I just used my kitchen scale to convert, and it seemed to work; nevertheless, these measurments aren't exact).

I had a hard time forming the dough into balls; maybe because of all the butter in the dough.  I finally just formed non-perfect looking rolls and set them to rise.  I let my rolls rise (after being formed) for way too long; they puffed up almost scarily; I thought they might burst!  Next time, I'll only let them rise for 1 1/2 hours, like the recipe suggests.  Because they rose for too long, the tops of the rolls, after baking, had tiny little holes and pock-marks in the surface.  (When kneading the dough, try not to add too much extra flour, or the dough might be dry or tough.  Mine was a little sticky).

These tasted wonderful; light and fluffy, and melt-in-your-mouth flaky.  I could just eat these for dinner; forget a soup or something to go with them! 

Middle-Class Brioche
El Invitado de Invierno

2 1/2- 3 cups white flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons yeast
1 pinch salt
1/3 cup milk
3 medium eggs
13 tablespoons butter at room temperature

Mix all the ingredients except the butter in a mixer or by hand. Then knead for 5 minutes by machine or 8 minutes by hand, till the dough is smooth. Add the diced butter and knead again for 5 minutes by machine or 10 minutes by hand. Put the dough into a bowl, cover tighly and leave in the fridge overnight.

Take the dough out of the fridge the next day and make 60 g balls while cold.  Then shape the balls and put them into the mold, with seam face under, leaving quite some room among them as they expand quite a lot. Cover the formed brioche and leave to proof at least one and a half hour, till more than double in size.   In the meantime preheat the oven to 200 ºC. Once the oven is a the right temperature, bake it for 20 minutes.

**This post and photos are property of http://dishingwithdish.blogspot.com/ **