Christmas Brioche

 Yay!!! It was successful. I am so happy after 10+ hours of working on this loaf, it turned out. I watched a video on how to make brioche with way more instructions than the visually aesthetic video from the Food Network. 

This video, although long and not produced well, was extremely informative.

https://youtu.be/RZBuJ4_LdDk

I used this recipe https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/classic-brioche-recipe this time around.  A couple things I did differently from last time. First, I mixed the dough for more than 10 min before adding the butter to develop the gluten a little further.  I beat and slightly flattened the room temp butter before incorporating it into the dough 1 tablespoon at a time. The dough was super soft and goopy and I did not add extra flour. Then I divided the dough and colored it prior to refrigeration.  It was very difficult to mix the dye into the dough because the dough was so soft and sticky. I refrigerated the dough overnight and rolled out each ball of dough. It was still sticky after a night of cooling!  I didn’t work the dough too much, but I stacked the three layers and rolled it up.  I made sure to have the white dough on the outside, so that I could have a good read on the level of browning.  Last time, I put the purple dough on the exterior/ bottom of the stack and it was so hard to tell if the dough was browning or burning.

Then came more patience....Last time I proofed the dough for an hour and it didn’t seem to rise much.  This time, the new directions stated to let the dough rise an inch beyond the loaf pan.  That took about two hours in a very warm spot between 2 crockpots.   I pressed the dough to check to see if it had overproofed.   Nope, the dough sprung back!  This time I diluted the egg wash with water and it helped reduce the amount of browning and cracking in the final product.  Additionally, I baked the loaf at 375F in convection mode for 40 min without peeking.  That was unintentional, I was supposed to check after 20, but I read the directions incorrectly.  So, 40 min later and the timer went off and the top of my brioche was a dark brown. It was just like the picture in the recipe.  I temped the product to be sure and it was above 190F.  Success!!!

And for the cross section:

Yea, okay the big bubble that is in the middle of the loaf bothers me a little, but I’m never going to make this type of bread again (if I did, I would punch down the dough and do a double proof or add milk powder to help even out the cell structure).  What a pain in the butt it is to make.  The result is like eating a stick of flavorless butter. Not worth the effort...but I proved it could do it.  It also looks super cool.

Merry Christmas!

Gingerbread cookies

 I have yet to find the perfect gingerbread cookie recipe.  It is driving me crazy. My first attempt this year yielded a dry and crumbly “dough.” This was Alex’s recipe from forever ago. I had tried it once in the past but forgot what adjustments I made to make it workable. This time, it would not form and I ended up throwing it away. This was after I let it sit and let it hydrate, I added water to see if that would work.... It smelled lovely through. 

*went back and read an old blog post and apparently Alex’s recipe never worked for me. https://mmmpork.blogspot.com/2010/12/you-cant-catch-me.html

Second round was this week. I tried the King Arther gingerbread cookie recipe. The dough came together very nicely. Instead of dirtying a pot, I put everything in a microwaveable bowl and melted the butter using the microwave. I changed around some the spices to match the ratio of the first recipe. As with all the warnings plastered all over the reviews and recipe, the dough was incredibly sticky even after a night in the freezer. The cookies are soft and addictive, especially after some royal icing. I just need to find a recipe where the cookie is just as tasty, but the dough is easier to work with during the rolling process. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/gingerbread-cookies-recipe

Since the dough was so difficult to work, I rolled little balls and made thumbprint cookies.  Wetting my finger tips helped reduce sticking when pressing down the cookies.

Leftover royal icing

 I had a bunch of royal icing left over, so I tinted some colors and went back to decorating.

Ugly sweater snowmen.

Too much time spent on a gingerbread house.

I made these look goooood

 I made some failed sugar cookies for Halloween, so I went back to the Joy of Cooking recipe again. This is such a nice dough to work with, but quite bland. Definitely need to add lemon zest next time.  The shapes were super nice and the lines were crisp. I made royal icing for the first time in a while and this recipe from Sweetopia is amazing. Definitely a keeper. 

https://sweetopia.net/2012/01/royal-icing-recipe-free-illustrated-recipe/

It takes a while to make, but let the mixer do all the work.  I wanted to get vibrant colors and went crazy with the food coloring in the cookie dough and the icing. I am so very pleased with the results.  I’ll have to do this again when I have time/patience. 

Cookies are decorated and waiting to dry overnight.

One eyed snowman with my famous hot cocoa. I’ll have to put together a recipe in the future.