Brioche: Classed Bread Baking

Yo.  Two big things to discuss.  Um, one: Benzie made me an apron!!  And it is so cute.  Two: I have been getting The Bread Baker's Apprentice at various libraries in order to complete this project, but it was recalled and I didn't have it.  So, I decided if it didn't come in by Thursday, I would buy it.  It didn't come in!  So now I actually own it.  So, basically, I now own an apron and cookbook.  Thus, I am a real baker.

 

Deal with it.  (PS: Benzie, your apron is so cute.  I mean, seriously people, doesn't it look like a dress?!)  Okay, now on to today's project!!  Brioche.  So, Peter provides three different formulations of brioche, which he problematically labels "Rich Man's Brioche," "Middle-Class Brioche," and "Poor Man's Brioche."  Obviously patriarchy and class-based oppression are at work here.  Peter also notes that back in the day, when Marie Antoinette was reported to say "Let them eat cake," she really said "Let them eat brioche," connoting its relation to the oppressors.

Basically, the differences between the breads are their amount of eggs and butter.  So, in solidarity with the proletariat, I'm making "Poor Man's Brioche," which I am relabeling "The Brioche of the Proletarian Revolutionaries."  aka The Brioche of:

Dude.  When I first saw Les Miserables, I thought Marius was ridic hot.  (PS: If you're wondering if every single one of my posts will feature of celebrity crush of mine, you're right.  However, they will not all be directly connected to Claire Danes, who I've probably also indirectly mentioned in every post.)  So, I looked him up on imdb just now, and was like *gasp* he appears in The Tudors in a while (I'm in the middle of season two)!!!!!!!  But, he looks like this:

Ew.  I'll stick to Jonathan Rhys Myers and that guy who marries his sister and gets killed as my celebrity crushes in The Tudors.  N E Wayz...

Sponge = (all bread -- I'm actually following Peter from now on and ignoring my love for whole wheat flour.  I liked the artos with just bread flour) flour + yeast + milk =

While this sat for forty-five minutes, I ate last week's bagel with cream cheese and (vegetarian) sausage!

Forty-five minutes and a bagel later, I added eggs + flour + sugar + salt + butter to the sponge = dough = 

This kneaded =

 

Pretty!  Reminded me of buttery pie crust.  It was fun to knead b/c it was so silky.  This sits for ninety minutes, so I . . .

. . . talked on the phone with Vicky instead of cleaning my apartment for Batty.  I'm a horrible person.  Hey, at least I wasn't taking a nap.  Life is sad when that's your comparison for laziness.

After ninety minutes, the dough rose!  Yaay!

So, then you spread this out.  It's like butter.  I seriously can't imagine what the "Rich Man's Brioche" aka Oppressors' Brioche is like.  It must be like cake.  Haha.  So poignant.

 

aka Nikki.

So, anyway, spread out:

This is the perfect bread for me to bake.  B/c after it's spread out, it has to sit for four hours or more in the fridge.  Thus, I am not tempted to skip my 5:30 class like I normally am to continue baking.

 

After four hours, it looks the same.  Except greasier.  Like the dough didn't take a shower today or something.  Ew.  Dirty dough.  (PS: I am watching the Duggars now.  I just wanted you all to know that.  It's very odd to grade WS 101 midterms, bake, blog, and watch the Duggars at the same time.  It's almost too much world-colliding to handle).

So . . . I could make brioche look like this:

 

But, I mean, that involves too much.  Like special pans.  And I'm like, Peter, I just spent $35 on you today.  I'm going to pass on the brioche pans you probably never use in the cookbook again.  So, I just stuck my dough in a loaf pan.  That I bought at Goodwill.  MORE POWER TO THE PROLETARIAT.

So, this sits for an hour.  Looks the same, you know the drill.  So, this is egg washed.  I was like, eh, I cut the recipe in half.  But the normal recipe calls for a whole egg.  So, what should I do?  I was like, eh, I want to make it good.  So I whisked up an egg.  Then I realized I didn't have a pastry brush.  So I used a paper towel to brush on double the amount of egg needed.  I hope the bottom of the bread won't be caked in oven-cooked scrambled eggs.

Blah.  This is supposed to fill the pan in fifteen to thirty minutes.  Like that's going to happen.  It'll happen like Marius will overthrow stuff instead of die.  PS: Is anyone else obsessed with the way Liam Neeson says "Jean Valjean."  You know the part I'm talking about.  In the trial.  Ugh, I can't find a clip.  But, there are a lot of clips of random people singing songs from the musical and some odd comparisons of Jean Valjean and Aragorn from Lord of the Rings.

Like, I'm sorry.  "'Who Am I?' from Les Misérables, starring Aragorn as Valjean and the Witchking as Javert"?!  Could you get any nerdier?!  I guess posting it to a blog about baking bread.  Um, yeah.

So, I was wrong!  It did get bigger in half an hour.  But, it doesn't fill the pan.  Oh well, it's going home with little luggage.

  

PS: (A more ugly) Zoe Saldana is in the episode of SVU I'm now watching.  Sorry you have to learn so much about what I'm doing, but I'm alone and need to tell someone the things I discover.

So, about forty minutes later, we get this:

My hand is there for comparison.  Dude.  It's so little.  I should have let it rise longer.  It's like a mini loaf.  How is this going to last me all week?!  I guess this is the lesson of the proletariat.

Here:

 

It's almost midnight.  This was tasty.  I'm tired.  Goodnight <3