This blog post and recipe comes from Saïd Pastry Nerd. Saïd M’Dahomais a French Comorian baker living in Calgary, Alberta. Saïd was born and raised in Paris, France, eating pastries all the time as he was working towards his PhD in Neuroscience. A few years ago, Saïd got a research position in Canada, and before he realized it, he started missing French pastries so much, that Saïd decided to start to bake his own. Saïd now runs a website called The Pastry Nerd where his main goal is to make sure his followers and website visitors don’t make all the mistakes that he made early on in his patisserie journey and progress quickly. You can find Saïd on Instagram at said.pastrynerd.

One of the most emblematic and most liked breads in France is brioche! Once you get a taste of that very flavorful, buttery bread that melts in your mouth, you won’t forget it.

What I really love about brioche is its versatility; you can it eat it plain, with jam or chocolate spread. One of my favorite things to do with brioche is to cut it in slices to make luxurious, but inexpensive sandwiches for my family.

Brioche can easily be frozen if you make too much of it. If it eventually dries out, don’t worry, you can make delicious French toast with it for your weekend brunch!

Tips to succeed at making brioche:

Make sure that the butter is at room temperature.

You want to make sure that the butter is soft when you incorporate it into the dough. If not, it is going to be very difficult to knead the dough with your machine.

Use a high-quality flour with a high protein percentage.

Brioche requires gluten to hold its shape despite the large amount of butter in the recipe. The more gluten (protein) you have, the better. In Alberta, all-purpose flour is of great quality and usually has around 13 per cent protein which is perfect for this recipe. If you live outside of Alberta, look for a bread flour, they usually have a lot of gluten.

Knead for a long time.

Now that you have a good quality flour, you need to “activate” its gluten. By this, I mean kneading it long enough so that the gluten will create a network that will keep the dough in shape. You know that the brioche dough has been kneaded for long enough when:

• the dough does not stick to the bottom of your stand mixer bowl or bread machine anymore,
• the dough can be held on to your hand without sticking to them, and
• you can extend the dough to the point it becomes see-through (it’s called the windowpane test – see picture).

• To do this, typically you should knead the dough for about 15-20 minutes with your bread machine or stand mixer. Use a good butter. Because there is a good amount of butter in this recipe, I suggest you use one with a good taste. That will influence the taste of your brioche!

Proofing time.

Fat (such as butter) tends to increase the time needed for a bread such as brioche to rise. Make sure to let your brioche dough rise for one hour after kneading. Then let it rest for two more hours after you shape it.

Give your brioche some flavor!

I made a plain recipe here, but you can flavor your brioche with vanilla extract (2 tsp), orange blossom water (one tbsp) or any other flavor you like.

Brioche (one pound loaf pan)

PREP 20M | BAKE 25M | ENJOY IN 45M (PLUS 3H 30M PROOF TIME)