Tuesday, February 26, 2013


How to make laminated brioche dough

Brioche dough is a light and slightly sweet dough that is used for gourmet sandwiches and burgers.  They are very eye appealing, usually brushed with egg wash to give them a darker, shinny top. Delicate when broken  open, very little dough inside, which is why they are great for sandwiches, less on the "bready" side, helps to capture the fillings more. 

Brioche dough is made with very few ingredients: bread flour, yeast, salt, milk and sugar.  Lite kneeding and let rise, and to get the best result, refrigerate overnight.  With the fact that there are few ingredients and it contains all milk for the liquid, this makes the dough light and rich. 

Laminate means to form or construct into thin layers.  So how to apply this to brioche dough?  Measure out a set amount of butter needed for the amount of dough from recipe.  The most tricky part is getting the temperature of your butter and dough right.  Once you can roll out the butter, it’s important to get it in a rectangular that will fit in the rolled out dough that is an inch from the edges and covers 2/3rds of the dough.   Usually after rolling out the butter, it becomes too soft, so put it in the frig till it’s the right temp. 

Once you have the brioche dough rolled out and at the right temp and your butter is the right temp, place butter on top of the dough on the left side.  It’s important to be gentle and love your dough or you could end up chucking this beautiful thing across the room after the many folds and huge amount of sweet, amazing butter that makes everything better, next to bacon. 

Fold the unbuttered side 1/3 over the buttered dough, then fold the left 1/3 over that.  Work quickly but gently, by rolling it out again till its 1/2 in. around edges to another rectangle.  Fold again in thirds same way, indent on one side with the blunt of a knife to keep track of your folds.  You will do three of these folds, refrigerate in between to let it rest and to keep the temperature low so the butter won’t melt through.  When you get to the last fold and roll it out again, you can decide how you want to cut out the dough.  In rolls, biscuit like, cut outs, they will all be beautiful.  Once you get them all cut out on a parchment lined cookie sheet, brush the tops with egg wash, let sit for a little, then bake these beauties. 

The end result will be, when you break into them, will have layer    upon layer of buttery dough and the outside might be a little crispier  when you bite into them.  All-in-all so worth the labor.  Just have patience and lots of love, which I think you will acquire when you see the amount of butter that goes into this and how beautiful the dough turns out.  Enjoy!   

1 comment:

  1. That looks delicious!
    The recipe reminds me a little of a buttermilk biscuit recipe I have made. Butter is added by spreading it on top of a rectangle of dough, then you fold it up like a letter-1/3 up from bottom and 1/3 down from the top, turn the dough 90 deg. and repeat. This is done several times and you have to be careful like in your recipe to avoid tearing the dough.
    Your recipe sounds really, really good.

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