- Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on "Preppy Kitchen,"
we're making a rich, buttery brioche.
So let's get started.
To make this recipe you need all purpose flour,
milk, granulated sugar, yeast, eggs, salt, butter,
and just a little bit of water.
First off, we're making the sponge.
This is like the starter for our bread.
This bread is impossibly rich.
It's like magic.
And to make these dreams come true,
there's a couple extra steps but they're totally worth it.
I want 3/4 of a cup of milk, that's 180 ML,
but it should be nice and warm, about 110 to 120.
So let's pop that in the microwave.
Nice and warm.
Everything should be room temperature
or warm for this recipe
because there's a lot of careful mixing.
So the sponge is like a starter.
It's gonna give us a head start.
120 grams, one cup of all purpose flour,
one tablespoon of sugar
just to give it a start for that yeast,
and one packet of act of dry yeast.
That's 2 1/4 teaspoons. If you're measuring it out.
We're gonna give this a whisk.
Now I'm gonna add my warm milk in.
Whenever you make a rich, rich dough
like for monkey bread or cinnamon rolls,
I like to start off by adding in
some of the dry mixture like the flour,
whisking it together into a smooth paste like this.
It looks kinda like pancake batter right now.
All right, this is going to get set aside, covered loosely,
and you can keep it at room temperature
or in a nice, warm, cozy place for about 45 minutes
until it gets nice and frothy.
We'll be right back.
(chill music)
Guess what?
- [Children] Papa wrote a book!
- That's right!
The number one question I've gotten over the years is,
"Do you have a book coming out?"
And I can finally say the answer is yes.
Thanks so much to all of you for supporting my dreams
and letting me do what I love:
teach people how to make delicious food
and have fun in the kitchen.
I'm so proud and excited for this book to come out.
It's been a lifelong dream of mine
to have my own cookbook gracing people's kitchens.
It's nothing but delicious seasonal recipes
that you can make at home,
and it shows so much of our life on the farm together
as well as some fun seasonal projects.
- Happy kitchen!
My book is available for pre-order today.
Click the link of the description box below
to pre-order your copy.
And make sure to save your receipt
for some fun giveaways and contests
we'll be announcing soon.
Now back to the recipe.
- [Children] Bye!
- Buh-bye!
(John laughs)
- After 45 minutes, we have a nice frothy starter.
Look at that.
Our yeast is awake, it's happy.
Now we can add all the rich, delicious things,
starting with six whole eggs.
These are room temperature.
I don't wanna add ice cold things into this dough at all.
Two.
So brioche, if you don't know, is super versatile.
If you've ever had like the most delicious hamburger bun,
it's brioche.
Monkey bread? Brioche.
A lot of cinnamon rolls? Brioche.
It's just like any delicious baked good is gonna be this,
and it is just
like truly magical when you make it at home.
I want 2 1/2 teaspoons of salt now.
We didn't add the salt at the beginning
because that can kill our yeast, which would be very sad.
(upbeat music)
And this by the way is kosher salt.
Really big granules.
I wanna show you that so you can just see.
If you look at that in the palm of my hand,
you can see they're like little salt pebbles.
If you're using fine table salt,
I would halve the amount
because you really pack a lot more salt
into each little spoonful.
The rest of the sugar's gonna go in now.
That's five tablespoons, one,
two, three,
four, and five, there we go.
Gonna zero the scale out
and add the remaining five cups of flour.
The traditional way of making brioche,
which is of course a French recipe,
is to use a marble counter,
and you're like slapping the dough down,
and like it's a very involved process
that does require some skill and some strength.
I'm using the mixer.
It is so much easier to do it this way
and saves a lot of time as well.
All right, speaking of which,
let's get our mixer and a dough hook.
Pop that bowl onto your mixer.
Dough hook.
We're gonna beat this on low for about two minutes
until it's well combined.
Definitely scrape the bowl down as needed at least one time.
In the meantime, I gotta talk about the butter.
This is the magic in the brioche.
We have 1 1/4 cups, but here's the deal.
We're gonna add this in slowly as this mixes.
The fat in the butter is going to wrap itself around
all the proteins in the flour,
so you'll have a network of gluten that makes bread,
but because the fat is covering so much of it,
it'll be really airy and expand up
and be light and melt in your mouth.
If you make cakes a lot,
it's the same idea that goes into the reverse crumb method,
where you mix the flour and the butter
and then you add the other stuff in.
My point is that we need to have soft butter for the this,
so if you open up your butter,
and this has been on the counter all morning long
but it's cold,
it should be soft and spreadable.
And this is not spreadable right now,
so we're gonna microwave this
in 10 second bursts at 50% power
until it's on the softer end of room temperature,
not melted though.
Scrape that bowl down
just to make sure there's nothing lurking at the bottom.
And now we're gonna continue mixing for 10 to 12 minutes.
The dough's coming together but it looks horrible.
Does not look...
You never want do to be like gnarled and lumpy.
It should be silky smooth and just very elastic.
So lock it off,
and we're gonna mix it on low for 10 to 12 minutes
or until it's nice and silky.
In the meantime, clean up,
watch some videos, do something fun.
So right now we've been mixing for about 10 minutes.
I wanna show you where we're at.
What is this?
It's like Jabba the Hutt is on my hook.
The dough is really tight right now,
and this is a lot of dough for this mixer.
We're gonna make it work though.
If you're using the larger mixer,
you might not have this problem.
But a couple of times throughout the mix,
I've just been taking this down and plopping it back.
Just let it mix up.
But if you wanna see where we're at at the 10 minute mark,
it's smoother, it's stretchier, it is almost there.
Giving this two more minutes,
but as I add the butter it should start relaxing.
And since we're towards the end of our mix
and our butter is nice and soft and spreadable now,
I can cut it up into cubes so it's ready to pop in.
I'm gonna cut this into about tablespoon-sized pieces.
This is the part where it's a labor of love
because you have to add the butter in slowly.
It's like if you're making
Italian or Swiss meringue buttercream,
but even a little bit slower
'cause it takes longer for the flour
to really get wrapped with the butter.
Okay, so let's take a look now.
This is looking,
look how much better that looks.
It's much more relaxed.
This is already a delicious dough.
Once we add that butter in, ooh, it's gonna be nice.
See how stretchy it is?
Get a good book, have your phone at the ready,
and we're just gonna add in
a tablespoon at a time of our soft butter.
As you add the butter in,
the dough's gonna start relaxing
and it won't cling to the hook as much.
But in the beginning, it's gonna happen for a while.
I'm waiting for the butter to disappear
before I add the next bit in.
Add the next bit in.
It's gonna be a few minutes in between each one, really.
My mixer's doing the work, which I love.
Every once in a while, I'm still taking the dough
and just giving it a little bit of a turnover,
'cause the butter does tend to wanna go to the side.
This is looking so silky and amazing now.
And if you're at home,
you can add the butter a little bit faster than I am.
I just want this to be the best brioche for you.
Taking your time does help though.
I also have been putting the butter right in the center
and just pressing it in.
(chill music)
Last tablespoon of butter.
This has been a journey I've really enjoyed
because it involves butter, delicious things,
and and noticing wonderful textures happen.
The dough smells amazing.
And while this butter is mixing in,
I'm gonna increase the speed to medium low,
that's two for this,
and we're just gonna mix it for about eight minutes
or until it's really silky smooth and elastic.
And I'll show you what that looks like.
'Cause right now it's smooth.
It's so soft 'cause of all the butter in here.
Look at this.
But it's breaking when I stretch it out,
so we really need to knead this
for at least eight minutes right now.
All right, eight or so minutes later,
let's take a look at at our beautiful, silky dough.
So right now it's not sticking to a clean finger,
but it's still tacky,
and that means it's ready
for it's almost first rise.
The first one didn't count. (laughs)
It's also like very silky,
and oh my gosh, the butter smell from this is heavenly.
All I wanna do is just scrape the bowl down.
We're not gonna put it into an oiled boil.
Oiled bowl.
Scrape, scrape, scrape, and then we're gonna cover it up,
and this goes into a nice, cozy place to rise
for about an hour or until it's doubled in size.
And remember, this was a good amount of work,
but it makes two loaves
and you can freeze one of them for a delicious treat later.
Into a cozy place you go.
(chill music)
So my brioche has risen up.
Look how big that is. Amazing.
It smells so good.
Before I punch it down, I'm buttering my two loaf pans.
These are eight by four inches.
And you really don't need to butter them that well
because this buttery bread comes out pretty easy,
gonna tell you that,
but it's better safe than sorry.
All right, that's ready.
Set this aside.
We're gonna lightly flour our work surface.
Feel so sad to do this, but let's punch that dough down.
The yeast is like, "We worked so hard."
I'm like, "Gotta work harder." (laughs)
That looks good.
Now I'm gonna turn this out onto my surface.
Gonna divide the dough in half.
This is a bench scraper and it comes in so handy.
You really should have one.
It's great for decorating cakes and for making doughs.
Okay, the beauty of this recipe is it makes two loaves,
one for now one for later, or two for later.
Now I'm gonna cut it into three equal pieces.
(soft upbeat music)
And it's time to get some basic braiding skills together.
So we're gonna roll our dough out
into three little nine inch logs.
Now we're gonna braid it.
And I'm not the best braider but we're gonna make it work.
(soft upbeat music)
- [Crew] Yep.
- Okay, that doesn't look horrible.
This is gonna go right into my pan.
You wanna tuck the ends underneath.
All right, that'll work.
We're gonna cover these up and give them one more hour
for their second/third rise.
While your loaves are rising,
go ahead and preheat your oven to 375 Fahrenheit
so it's nice and toasty once they're ready to go in.
Look at these. They're so puffed and amazing.
They also still smell good.
This whole process has been a symphony of deliciousness.
All right, one last step is the egg wash.
They're golden and glossy on top.
One egg into a small bowl.
Ooh, a table spoon of water or so.
And we're just gonna mix that up.
Gently brush your bread with the egg wash.
Makes a big difference.
It really gives you that beautiful finish
that this bread deserves.
We've been through a lot together.
My brioche is ready to go into the oven.
375 for 35 minutes.
After 25 minutes you can cover them loosely with foil
if they're taking on too much color.
In you go.
Once your bread's out of the oven,
let it rest in the pan to cool slightly for five minutes,
and then we're going to transfer it onto a wire rack
to cool completely.
Time for a cut.
Wait till you see the inside.
(gasps) It's like a beautiful cloud.
Look at that piece.
It is soft as silk, you can see through it,
and it smells amazing.
You can enjoy this any way you please, oh my gosh.
Soft, buttery, light as air, and delicious.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like my videos check out my bread playlist.