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

Bread Baking via The OC, Part Deux

Omg, so yesterday all this crazy stuff happened with my driving, etc etc and now it's snowing and I can't fix it b/c Ohio is bad at taking care of roads when it's snowing.  But, on the plus side, I get to finish up baking the bagels today!!  Which is awesome.  It's distracting me from completing any work :)

See how snowy!  Taken from inside my warm living room, listening to Power 107.5, and waiting for my water to boil.

Which took for-ev-ver (yes, I will link this clip constantly).  Here it is, being stubborn.  Big pots.

So, I took pictures of my socks.  Zac!  (Thanks, Batty! <3)

 Finally, it was ready!  I brought the babies out.

 

They look like (gross) donuts.  Made me want donuts, not bagels.

thanks edie peterson.

Adam Brody wants it (the bagels I mean).

So, then, the babies boil.  Like lobsters except more humane.  And they float!  I never think of bagels as weighing less than water.

 

Bagel flower!  Am I the only person who thinks of flowers every time there are things in a circle?

They boil for like two minutes.  I still have yet to see why they boil.  Whateva, Peter.  Chu crazy.

Baby being put on the pan!

Looks even more like a delicious glazed donut now.  There aren't nearly enough pictures of celebrities involving bagels and donuts.  All I keep finding is this.

 

um, thanks? tuberrader.

Ew.  I mean, these people must really like bagels and/or donuts.  Sorry we all had to look at that.  Anyway. . .

These bagels probs don't look at appetizing now, but here they are at home!

Yum yum yum.  They only took like ten minutes to bake, which is nice, AND you don't have to wait a hour to eat them!  Just fifteen minutes.

Tried to take them off the parchment paper to cool on a rack.  Fail.

 

So, I just left them on the pan (don't kill me, Peter!!).  I wish I had cream cheese, but alas, I do not!

Nor do I have a bagel cutter.  If only Sandy were real.  He would probably bring me one out of the goodness of his heart.  Then save me from some legal trouble.  And adopt me.

Ahhhh!  These bagels are SO GOOD.  Even though I only have butter and a knife.

Bagels with the only green thing in sight in this wintery winter (<3 Vicky -- look, it is really growing and has leaves!!)

 

Yum (the bagels I mean).  <3

Bread Baking via The OC

Bagels!!  Peter is so funny when it comes to bagels.  There are three pages of text before the actual recipe, including this gem: "There are two kinds of people in the world, those who like chewy water bagels and those who prefer softer steamed bagels."  Someone needs to make a Facebook quiz about this.  Anyway, Peter is inclined toward the former, and his recipe reflects this.  I never really thought about which bagel I prefer, but I mean, I love bagels.  Hands down.  So we'll see about this water bagel thing.  Peter says all bagels now are steamed, b/c they're easier to manufacture.  They don't require crazy boiling.  I still can't imagine why bagels need to be boiled, but I guess I'll find out.

My sponge = yeast + flour (I'm trying half bread flour, half whole wheat again, although Peter says you can't create an "authentic" bagel without high-gluten flour, but whatever, authenticity is so structuralist.) + water =

So, this sits for two hours and becomes:

 

It's all bubbly and foamy!  Then, you hit it on the counter, and it deflates (trying to avoid connotations of violence here).

Bad picture, but trust me, it deflated.  All the little bubbles popped.  This sponge was so weird to mix up.  It retained it's bubblyness.  This + yeast + more flour + salt + honey =

 

So, I was really surprised with this bread -- for some reason, usually I think, blech, this is so floury, I'm going to have to add so much water.  So, I thought that with this one, but I didn't add any, and it turned out fine!  When I was kneading it, all of the excess flour got incorporated!  PS: I watched the "Pressure" episode of My So-Called Life earlier this week, so when I was kneading, I just kept thinking of this:

Oh, if only I had a man to knead bread dough with me!  Which from now on will obviously be my goal in life.  Yes, My So-Called Life: always defining my resolutions.  Once I kneaded my dough sans man, it became:

 

So pretty!  This was a difficult dough b/c it was so dense.  But I thought of my love for bagels and danced/kneaded to Mary J.

I'm making mini-bagels!!  Yaaay!  So, my dough all broken up:

And these pieces all rolly:

 

So mathy looking.  Too beautiful!!  Too beautiful!!  Must be put in purdah!!!!!

 

Whew.  Now I can function while the rolls enjoy a (most likely queer) harem in their purdah.  At least for twenty minutes.

But after twenty minutes, the "rolls" require penetration (omg -- I'm sorry, this blog entry is ridic weird) to transform into bagels.  Like self-shattering Bersani style, basically.  NBD.

 

That looks so dirty.  Anyway, that's how rolls become bagels.  So sue me.  All my rolls after penetration, aka bagelified:

So after another twenty minutes of chillaxin', the bagels are supposed to float in water.  And look!

 

It does!!  Yaay!  So, that means I'm done for today.  Next, Peter super emphasizes how important "retardation" of bagels is.  There is a lot of problematic language in bread making, I am realizing.  We'll talk some about this next week, too -- with brioche.  So, the babies are staying overnight in the fridge and will go home to the oven tomorrow!!

It's kind of like Cribs.  You can see what's in our fridge!  At least some things.  It looks like Brendan went to Whole Foods, but he didn't.  Anyway, good good night, little bagels!  See you tomorrow!  <3