Brioche à Tête

I've recently developed an obsession with homemade bread. It started with the easiest artisan bread recipe ever. And then I bought this book, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. The concept is to make an extremely large amount of dough at one time and refrigerate or freeze the dough so that when you want some fresh bread, you just need to take the dough out and bake it. This is my first recipe from the book - brioche à tête. This form of the brioche is actually the most common - the bread is formed and baked in a fluted round tin. A large ball of dough is placed at the bottom and topped with a smaller ball of dough. You can watch the video on how to make these on the authors' website, found here.

Brioche à Tête
adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (2 packets)
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
8 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup honey
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
7 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Note: I halved this recipe to make 1 loaf and 6 Brioche à Tête

Directions
Mix the yeast, salt, eggs honey and melted butter with the water in a 5-quart bowl, or lidded (not airtight) food container. Mix in the flour, using a spoon until all of the flour is incorporated.



Cover (not airtight), and allow to sit at room temperature for about two hours. The dough can be used as soon as it is chilled. This dough is way too sticky to use after the initial rise, but once it is chilled it is very easy to handle. The dough can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. After that you can freeze the dough.



To make the Brioche à Tête, cut off a 1 pound piece of dough (or an appropriate sized piece for the pan you are using, there are mini pans available) and form into a boule. Place it seem side down in the pan.



Take a small 3-ounce piece of dough (or one proportionately smaller than your first piece) to create the tête. First form it into a small boule, then roll one end of the dough between the palms of your hands to create a tear drop shape. Make a deep and wide indentation into the larger ball of dough. Place the tear shaped piece into the indentation so that the part sticking up looks like a small ball resting on the large ball.


 
Cover loosely with plastic and let rise. Brush with egg wash and bake at 350 degrees for 20-40 minutes, depending on the size of the bread. For both the loaf and the tete, I baked the bread for only 25 minutes.



I had extra dough and ended up making small rolls for sandwiches.



I took large chunks of dough and folded them into rounds, fitted into a standard greased loaf pan.



Overall, I was very happy with this recipe. It took a little longer than expected but was well worth the effort. The interior was buttery and flaky and will work well as either a sandwich or burger bread. My one complaint was that the bread was lacking flavor - it needs either a little more honey or salt, depending on your brioche preferences. I will definitely be using this recipe again for our summer BBQs as a yummy alternative to the hamburger bun. The book also uses this brioche dough as the base for many other yummy creations, like donuts, cinnamon rolls, beignets, etc..