Brioche Buns

Oh brioche. Brioche, brioche, brioche... All those years eating regular buns, not realising how good you were. Is there a topping you don't work well with? Heat it up, put on some butter, omg yum! Make a hamburger patty, some cheese, maybe some bacon, topped with some aioli? OMG yum! We needed to try to make some brioche from scratch, it just had to be done, so our adventure began.

Recipe number one, we start getting all of our ingredients together. We turned to each other and Candice states, "Do you think this seems like a lot of flour?" Adam replies, "Ah oh..." Hesitantly, we continued. We mixed, it raised, it baked, and we ended up making........... a lovely looking bread roll. Yes, that's right. A lovely, bread roll. After all our efforts, it just wasn't brioche.This was not what we had dreamed about! We couldn't give up, we had to keep going!

Recipe number two, OK, this is looking a lot better. Less flour, more water... the mixture smells good. We're getting excited. A few hours pass, something strange is happening, the dough isn't keeping it's shape, it's sinking, sinking, sinking... it finishes baking and... game over. Major sighs, it's starting to get late, but we can't give up, we just can't.

Recipe three... It's 2:00am in the morning, we stare into the oven with tired, exhausted eyes and... a golden glow radiates from the oven. We take out the baked buns/potential brioche and let them cool. They look good, they look... really good. We cut into them. We each take a tentative, worried bite............ *victorious music* Yeah, baby! This recipe, with some tweaks, came from Emilie at theclevercarrot.com. Everyone, it's time for us to go to bed. Goodnight! Let us know how you go.

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Brioche Buns
 
Servings                          
8
 
Prep Time:       04:00    
Cook Time:      00:10 
 
Main Ingredients 

7 grams of active dry yeast
1 Cup warm water
3 Tablespoons of warm milk
2 1/2 Tablespoons of sugar
2 Large eggs
3 Cup bread flour (important for texture)
1/3 Cup of all - purpose flour
1 1/2 Teaspoons of salt
2 1/2 Tablespoons of unsalted butter

Preparation

1. Firstly, you need to proof (activate) your yeast. In a small bowl, add the yeast and one cup of warm water. Cover it with glad wrap and wait 10 minutes for the yeast to start growing.
2. Beat one egg and then add the milk and sugar. Continue to beat this mixture for two minutes. Keep this mixture to the side. We use the a kitchenaid to do all the heavy lifting! Add your activated yeast to this mixture and beat for a further two minutes.
3. In another bowl, you want to add your dry ingredients which include the flour and the salt. Add your butter to this mixture (we found it was easier if you left the butter out prior to this step to warm the butter). Using the your mixer, mix these ingredients for five minutes or until you can no longer clearly see the butter. It should be mixed in quite well.
4. Make a well in the middle of this bowl and add in the wet mixture.
5. You now want to knead your dough, we used the kitchenaid attachment to do this for us. In the kitchenaid, it took about 10 minutes to do this. You want the dough to get to a point where it's no longer sticking to the bottom of the bowl. Also, don't be surprised if the dough feels sticky, this is a good thing!
6. Transfer the dough to another bowl and cover with a damp cloth. You need the dough to double in size. This took about 2 hours for us and the temperature in the room was around 21 degrees celcius. Don't rush this step! This is absolutely crucial, because this is what creates the light texture of the brioche.
7. Remove the dough from the bowl onto a lightly floured surface and gently punch down onto the dough to remove all the trapped air. Split the dough evenly into eight separate balls.
8. The process is quite simple. Firstly flatten the ball. Imagine that the bun in upside down. You want to go around the circle, grabbing the edges and pinching them to the center. Flip the dough ball around and gently role to get a nice, spherical shape. Place each ball on a baking tray, lined with baking paper. Ensure you give about 3 to 4cm in between each one otherwise once you bake, you'll get connected buns!
9. All the balls to rise for a further 1 1/2 hours.
10. In a bowl, put remaining egg, mix with a splash of water with a fork, then with a brush (or paper towel if you don't have a brush), paint mixture onto the top of the dough balls.
11. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius fan-forced. Add a pan at the bottom oven with half a cup of water and bake your buns for 20 minutes. The buns should look a nice golden colour. If not, give it a few more minutes and watch closely to prevent them from burning.
12. Remove buns from the oven and place on a cooling rack. Allow to cool before eating! Yum!

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