brioche – recipes #3 & #4 & similes by eluvium

Every time I make bread using a mixer, I ask myself the same question,  who is responsible for the outcome of this bread, me or the machine? I’m never able to answer because I don’t really know what it means or even what it takes to consider oneself a true ‘bread baker’, however, I do always conclude that making bread with the aid of a mixer is a great deal more satisfying and enjoyable than without one. I was well on my way to executing the Joe Pastry version of brioche when catastrophysicist suggested I try the Thomas Keller version of brioche found in The French Laundry Cookbook, which he had had success with.  I decided to borrow my mother’s mixer to execute the Keller recipe, in an attempt to see just how drastic a difference the use of one’s hands and the use of a mixer can be when making dough. Like night and day?

I understand that these are two different recipes, however, not so different that if both were executed properly they wouldn’t  resemble one another in some way. As is made evident by the above picture, Recipe #4, the Thomas Keller version of brioche, which I made using a mixer completely blows recipe #3, the Joe Pastry version of brioche, out of the water. One came out like a billowy pillow,  the other, a bean bag.  Mind you, taste-wise, the Joe Pastry version was a bit sweeter than the Keller version, which could be construed as good or bad depending on who you asked.  I’m tempted to try the Joe Pastry version again, but with a mixer this time, except then I remember how it’s  a three-day affair, and who has time for that? Not even me, and I’m on lay-off. Patience is a virtue.

BRIOCHE by THOMAS KELLER

key, have a mixer on hand. this one is my mothers and it only has one speed, which I understand probably had an effect on the overall outcome of the bread, but still, a one speed mixer is better than no mixer at all.

add 2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast to 1/3 cup very warm water. set aside for ten minutes. in the meantime, sift & mix 2 1/2 cups cake flour, 2 cups all purpose flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 2 1/2 tsp salt in the mixer bowl. put the mixer on and begin adding 6 eggs, allowing each one to fully incorporate into the dry ingredients before adding the next one. the recipe calls for room temperature eggs, which I guess is standard in baking. I've tried this recipe three times now, and one of the times I added eggs straight out of the fridge. I noticed a difference in the baked bread, which could be a result of the cold eggs, or several other subtle things I did differently. Still, room temp eggs is the way to go. once all the eggs have been added, pour in the yeast mixture and leave the mixer on for 5 minutes.

using room temperature butter, add 20tbsp of it to the dough, mixing a minute per addition. once all of the butter has been added mix for another ten minutes.

the dough will be sticky, but should pull away from the bowl with little effort. flour a fresh bowl to dump the dough into. cover with saran wrap and leave to double in size. the recipe calls for at least a three hour wait. i've left it for far longer than three hours. we are in the middle of winter, so finding a warm place for the dough to do it's thing is difficult and could be the reason that 5 hours is a more accurate time frame to expect the dough to double within.

after the initial proofing the dough is ready to be folded, not kneaded.

place the dough back into the floured bowl, recover with saran and place in the fridge overnight.

in the morning, the dough was ready to divide into two and shape. It amazed me how pliable the dough was and pleasurable it was to work with. butter and flour two 81/2 by 41/2 inch loaf pans, and place the dough into pans to proof for three hours or so. again, my proofing time was longer than the allotted three hours due to a chilly kitchen.

place pans in a preheated 350 degree oven fo30-40 minutes. I found that the tops of the bread got brown really quickly. a good idea might be to have some foil on hand to cover once ar desired colour has been reached on the outside of the bread.

I'm not sure what went right when attempting this recipe for the first time, but the recipe was easy to follow and the bread came out better than any loaf of bread I have made in the past. I have tried the recipe two other times, and neither came out as well as this initial brioche did. The recipe is obviously a solid recipe, so I can only account for the discrepancies between each attempt as having something to do with what I did. The use of cold eggs? the use of cold butter? not waiting a minute between each addition of egg & butter? temperature in the kitchen? wrong water temp killing the yeast? I can't pinpoint what went right and what went wrong or what i did differently between each attempt as I never make note of specifics. perhaps I should.

SIMILES by ELUVIUM

I could write something about Matthew Cooper’s   Eluvium   and his latest record, Similes, but I have as much business trying to describe music as I do describing the art of bread baking, none. I listened to this record all afternoon as I watched my third batch of the Keller brioche sort of fail to do the right things in the right amount of time. I suspect  The Motion Makes Me Last will remain a favorite song throughout this year, and years after. I won’t bother saying what the song reminds me of, or what the entire record  sounds like, because to draw comparisons would be pointless here. There is a cinematic scope to Similes though that is pretty enveloping and wonderful. enjoy the beautiful meloncholy music this record offers up.  A  far easier type of beauty to grasp than that of making brioche.

brioche – the third try

RECIPE  #1 -

This recipe is shit. Either that or I’m an idiot. Whatever the case, I will not be attempting this version of brioche again. Three times was enough for me. This time around I had the dough proof over night because in three hours time, it had not grown at all. Then, I extended  the second proofing period by at least three hours and again, there was no growth. I decided to bake them regardless, and the mini brioches came out much better than I anticipated, considering yesterday I was on the verge of tossing the dough in the garbage for the third time. A slight yeasty flavour to them, but overall, pleasant. Still, the frustration caused when making this dough is too vast to think that the taste of the brioche when baked even matters.

RECIPE #2 -

I was skeptical about this recipe for a couple of reasons. The first, because I was having a string of bad luck with making brioche and was feeling sort of defeated, and second  because there was no initial proofing period for the dough,  just a mix of  all the ingredients and refrigeration, a process I’ve never tried before. When I took the dough out of the fridge to warm up on the counter the next morning, it looked the same as it had the night before, which I wasn’t sure was suppose to be the case. I spoke to Enrico about using a starter when making brioche. He said he never does, he always uses the mix, refrigerate, shape, proof, bake method, which was what this recipe called for. After the dough had reached room temperature, I began shaping into larger and smaller balls and placing in a greased muffin tin. I left these out to proof for a few hours, and they rose really nicely, and once baked in a preheated 400 degree oven for 17 minutes, they were light and fluffy and tasty.  I’m not done looking for a great brioche recipe, but this one is easy and didn’t cause me any frustration at all, which is always a plus, so it’s definitely one I will keep on hand to make again. 

surfacing sometime soon in 2010 – laugh tracks & the suprise

*  I have seen many things – Tim Cohen

&

new snivel and run ep

DOWNLOAD. it’s a keeper.

making brioche with the help of you tube!

If the recipe I`ve been using fails for the third time,  I`m going to follow melissa through her you tube lessons on making brioche. She`s got a small head and she looks a bit plasticky, but she`s a red head, so I won`t hold it against her. besides,  I need direction, desperately. I still don`t have a mixer though -

making dill brioche with dead yeast, the short story ‘a death in kitchawank’ by T.Coraghessan Boyle & who cares how long you sink (lucky kitchen)

The tragic days of our lives, the days of accounting, begin like any other, with routine, with the bagel in the toaster and the coffee on the stove. So this is a morning.

I thought I was going to make brioche during the christmas season. Never happened. I haven’t baked in a few weeks now, and even though I really haven’t missed it much, being laid off from work and finding myself at home more often has instilled a need to stay productive in some capacity (especially when sam isn`t around). I found a recipe for brioche that looked fairly easy to attempt.

31/2 cups flour
3 tbsp sugar
21/2 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/2 cup butter (which i added dill to)

mix dry ingredients. make a well in the center stir in the eggs. slowly incorporate all the flour mixture into the eggs until a dough is formed. knead 12 minutes. take the room temperature butter and add bit by bit into the dough, working each piece through and through before adding another piece. once dough is formed, leave to proof until doubled (2 hours), punch down and roll into balls. place these mini balls into buttered muffin tins and leave to proof for an hour. bake for 15 minutes in a preheated 400 degree oven.

maybe not so easy after all. right off the bat, the recipe had an incorrect measurement of flour. the 3 cups of flour was far too much for the three eggs, and I ended up having to add milk and an extra egg to create something that even looked remotely like dough. it was heavy and tough and after the two-hour proofing period, I threw it away because it had not proofed at all.  Apparently other people had problems with the same recipe. Their solution was reducing the flour to 1 1/2 cups. I tried again this afternoon. All went well, and a rather nice dough formed pretty much immediately after  incorporating  the flour mixture into the eggs. I managed to knead for at least ten minutes and the butter additions were successful. I left the dough in a cupboard, as the rest of the kitchen seemed cold, and left to pick sam up from school. the dough had been left to double in size for 4 hours. Within that time nothing happened to the dough, and again, I was throwing  it in the trash.  I can only conclude that the instant yeast that’s been  in my fridge since november is dead. I went out and bought a new batch of instant yeast so I can try again tomorrow.  Not sure what I’ll do if attempt #3 fails. toss the recipe?

My first failed attempt was accompanied by the cd ‘jason ajemian - who cares how long you sink’, series 2 of the sparkling composers series.   I picked  it up a few months ago in a dollar bin, despite not knowing a thing about it. I  still don’t really know anything about the cd, other than the compositions are by jason ajemian, and that they sound  pleasing to Sams ears.  Apparently Sam likes  this sort of music, a lot. His assessment  was that it sounded like halloween music, which was pretty much what he thought of the epistrophy by Thelonious monk when I played it for him not so long ago.  I like the cinematic aspect of the Jason Ajemian cd. This is the artist statement explaining a bit about the nature of the sparkling composers series  -

“Who Cares How Long You Sink is a group devoted to the slower aesthetic of musical movement.  It is an attempt at making music move at a pace that closer represents the movement and growth of nature.  Representing something like the moons travel across the night sky and/or a tree’s sway in one area of that sky, rather than locomotion or some societal action.  Most material is played during the musicians’ natural inhales or exhales and not to an external clock.  Allowing everyone to move at their own pace through the material, becoming one layer in the stack of sound, motion and harmonic possibilities.”

hmmmmm….here is what the label (lucky kitchen) behind this release says -

“Solo CDs by electronic composers, new and old, whose work give us the feeling of shiny generosity and warmth. These works are fully “musical” in their harmonic range and rhythmic constructs (with or without backbeat), yet they are also fully developed ideas (a rare bird).

These CDs contain a vague idea of narrative using meditative compositional techniques, which are to be read like a book. Oppositional audio techniques, such as improvisation vs. composition, digital vs. acoustic, weave expressively around each other within the landscape of composition.

They are works that open a door and step back so you can come in for a warm drink. We know their stories, we would like you to know them as well.”

 As my brioche sat in a bowl silently snickering at me, sam contemplated taking this cd to school on friday to accompany his haunted house drawing, and the recorded narrative of his dracula movie.  I’m not sure how much more Halloween talk I can stomach in January. I’m not sure how well Sams idea will go over with his kindergarten class for show and tell.

This afternoon, between kneading,  I did something I haven’t done in a long time,  I went  through The New Yorker in search of something to read. I chanced upon a short story by T.Coraghessan Boyle, a writer whose work I have always been able to appreciate, especially his short fiction. This line, near the tail end of the story,  was especially fitting and affecting  this afternoon -

“She knows it will all be lost, everything we make, everything we love, everything we are. “

Throwing the failed brioche dough away, with this line fresh in my mind, I couldn’t help but think, “it’s only dough.” Read a death in kitchawank HERE.

song of the day

MOON ROCK

 

THE BORING LANDMARKS

snow mix

1. spires in the snow – ariel pink’s haunted graffiti
2. the afternoon turns pink – black moth super rainbow
3. snowdogs – deerhunter
4. snow globe – mezzanine owls
5. sleds behave – back off cupids
6. cats – unrest
7. work’n'play – the zombies
8. have a nice day mr. clay – robert pollard
9. the blue robe – tom verlaine

10 really good things

the final installment, i promise

drives on calm snowy days

pomegranate gelato

mavis in the snow

the super duper turning into a life sized snow globe

sledding

sams birthday drawing for sara

watching other people shovel the driveway

a  pottery wheel for kids

getting a hand me down that i can still picture my mother wearing in 1985

another latecomer to my never ending list of 2009 favorites

While going through my itunes today, I came across the album, songs by the tumbled sea, a really gorgeous collection of instrumental songs that I’d somehow  inexcusably forgotten existed. Today I found out  that the tumbled sea put out a new collection of songs back in May 2009 called Melody Summer. These 11 songs can probably be described in a vast  array of  ways.  I only have one word,  beautiful. They are piano driven and possess the ability to soothe and calm one into a dreamy state.  Johnny would deem this perfect napping music. He’s at an actual hockey game tonight, which apparently is something he hasn’t done since 2007. He can be enlightened by this tomorrow. I would say the album  served as pretty perfect dinner table music as I sat in my little corner of the world waiting for sam to make his way through yet another hour-long ho-hum meal. I really can’t imagine  listening to these songs, at any time,  and not completely falling under their spell. They are really rather special, and I am pretty pleased to have come across them today while the snow started to fall in the early evening.  Fortunately, copies of Melody Summer are still available to purchase  HERE (unlike songs by the tumbled sea, which is sold out) and future recordings is offering a free download of the album at their site HERE. enjoy.