Dare Me to Cook

The Bread Baker' Apprentice includes three brioche variations: Rich Man's Brioche, MIddle-Class Brioche, and Poor Man's Brioche. I decided to go for broke and try the Rich Man's version -- a whole pound of butter -- it is definitely one rich bread. The crumb is super buttery yet light and tender, however all that butter made for a lot of work. It is a very difficult dough to work with, very sticky and very difficult to incorporate all that butter into the dough even with a bread machine doing the mixing. (I gave on attempting it by hand pretty quickly!)

The dough took a very long time to rise, slowed down by all that fat and the chilly temperature this morning. I attempted the traditional brioche a tete shape, but they sort of flattened out while baking. Maybe the "head" was too big? Next time I try this bread, I will make the Middle-Class version and hope they turn out little prettier.