Make Your Own Bread with this Easy Brioche Recipe

This post about how to make your own bread was inspired by a cookbook I received at no charge to review. This brioche recipe is reprinted with permission. This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on a link and make a purchase I will receive a very small amount of money to put towards my blogging adventure.

There is something comforting about the smell of homemade bread baking in the oven. As I sit here, my brioche is in the oven cooking and I am drooling with anticipation of a warm slice slathered with butter. I don’t make homemade bread very often. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I have made it this year but I am hoping that changes in 2014. I am tired of spending a fortune on bakery bread and throwing away all the plastic bags they come wrapped in. When I received The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

to review I decided that even as busy as I am every day, I could spare 5 minutes to try to make homemade bread occasionally. If you want to learn to make your own bread, this easy brioche recipe may be a good place to start!

There were a few things I really liked about this recipe. Basically, I dumped the dough ingredients together after dinner last night. Just tossed everything in my KitchenAid mixer (how do people live without one of those?) and then stuck the bowl in a warm spot for a couple of hours to get the yeast happy and active. There is NO kneading for this step at all. Before I went to bed I just covered the bowl and stuck it in the refrigerator. Very easy and no mess to clean up before bed! YAY…gotta love a recipe that makes cleanup easy!

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First thing in the morning I grabbed the dough out of the fridge (still in my mixer bowl), added a couple tablespoons of flour, attached the dough hook and kneaded the dough for about 30 seconds as recommended in the recipe. After that, all I had to do was shape it into a loaf, put it in the pan and let it rise.

Now, maybe my yeast wasn’t active enough or maybe my house just isn’t as warm as it should be but that rising that should have been 90 minutes was actually about 3 hours. Not that rising dough is hard or anything. Just sit back and read a book and ignore it completely. Trust me….watched dough does NOT rise quickly! But, it wasn’t as quick as the cookbook said it would be. However, after the rising you only have a 40 minute bake time to suffer through before your bread is done.

Little tip:  Do not try to cut warm bread. It really does not cut well and you will be left with a mangled loaf that tastes delicious but doesn’t look very attractive. Trust me, I do this a lot! No, you must wait even longer for the bread to be ready to slice and eat. But, the resulting deliciousness is well worth the wait! It is significantly cheaper than the specialty breads I enjoy buying at the bakery and does not come wrapped in a plastic bag I have no use for.

If you would like to start making your own bread, check out my review of the cookbook I used and invest in a couple of good loaf pans. This easy brioche recipe is loaded with butter and eggs, giving it a rich flavor and tender texture. While you do have to plan to be around for the rising, the actual work involved when you make your own bread is relatively small. Now…if I can just force myself to wait to cut into it for a couple more hours….

Easy Brioche Recipe

Yield: 8

Easy Brioche Recipe

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An easy brioche recipe that utilizes an overnight rising in the refrigerator.

Prep Time 12 hours

Cook Time 45 minutes

Total Time 12 hours 45 minutes

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup warm water (100 degrees F or less)
• 1/2 TBSP granulated yeast
• 1/2 TBSP Kosher salt
• 4 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 1/2 sticks butter, melted
• 3 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 TBSP water)

Instructions

2. Mix the yeast, salt, eggs, honey and melted butter with the water in a large mixing bow.
3. Whisk gently until combined.
4. Mix in the flour without kneading, using a spoon or heavy mixer with paddle attachment. The dough will be loose but will firm up after chilling.
5. Cover loosely and allow to rest at room temperature for 2 hours
6. Chill the dough for at least 3 hours. You can keep the dough in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
7. To bake, place a grapefruit size ball of dough on a floured surface. Dust with more flour and quickly shape it into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter turn as you go.
8. Elongate into an oval and place in a 8 1/2 by 4 inch loaf pan that has been well greased.
9. Let rise 90 minutes (mine took more like 3 hours)
10. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
11. Brush with the egg wash
12. Bake in the center of the oven for 45 minutes until medium brown and well set.
13. Allow to cool before slicing