Can't get brioche dough right, need your help
I've tried a few dough/yeast recipes for brioche and they never come out quite right. Really, I need someone experienced to show me what the dough should feel and look like when it's ready, but I don't know anyone like that.
What's usually wrong is:
- the brioche are denser and less aerated than they should be
- they are crumbly and don't have that thread-like texture
- they taste a bit yeasty
I proof the yeast and it bubbles nicely so I know it's ok. The brioche rise ok and double in volume too.
I don't have a machine so I knead by hand, for about 20 mins. Could that be the problem, am I over-kneading, or under-kneading?
By loukoumades
on Oct 16, 2009 09:00 AM
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Hmmm. The best I can say is that I have used Julia Child's recipe successfully twice now. It takes a long, slow rise (I'm thinking about 8 hrs total?). And the dough should be really, really sticky. I have always had to knead it with a pastry scraper. Maybe check out her recipe?
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Difficult to know without looking at the formula you're using in preparing your dough.
Are you basing your preparation on a sponge? How many eggs and how much butter are you using? You may be over-kneading. It shouldn't take longer than about 10 minutes to complete the kneading process for a brioche. Are you using baker's percentage to determine your ingredient ratio or dip/level/pour?
Give this link a try:
http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/vid...
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My dough wasn't really sticky, no. I could knead it on a surface without adding much flour and it didn't stick.
The ingredients I used were:
100g butter, 50g sugar, 300g flour, 1 packet yeast, 2 eggs, 100ml milk, pinch salt. Sorry it's all metric, I'm in Europe.
What should the dough look like when you're done kneading? should it be really smooth? mine wasn't.
I will check Julia Child's recipe, if I can find it.
Thanks again, great to get advice from experienced bakers.
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"I will check Julia Child's recipe, if I can find it."
The link I gave you is one of Julia Child's videos.
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oh ok thanks. the video wasn't working on my browser so I couldn't see it. But I got it to work now on another browser.
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As Procrastibaker said, the dough is really sticky so if you're kneading it on a counter, easily, I think you might have added too much flour. Peter Reinhart says (and I go by what he says) that it's difficult to overknead dough. It sounds like you might be underkneading it. I've only made brioche w/ my stand mixer and it's really taxing on it. If I were to try it by hand, I'd probably do more of a taffy pull knead than on the counter. To know if you've kneaded enough, you can do the windowpane test. There's a really good picture here:
http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=111
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oh thanks for that link, that's really useful. My dough would totally fail the window pane test, it was nowhere near that elastic. Looks like I need to knead more. Or buy a stand mixer.
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Was definitely under-kneading. I tried it again, kneaded the life out of it, the dough was much more sticky this time too. It came out really good. Success!
Thanks for your help.
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Bravo! Did you use the Julia Child recipe this time or your original recipe?
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I chickened out of using Julia Child's recipe, because it didn't seem like I could do it by hand. So I used a simpler recipe - but not my original one.
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Glad it worked! Nothing beats home made brioche.
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