mamalama: Brioche Day!

Oh, how I love the internet. I have found the most wonderful blog/website called La tartine Gourmande, and today, I baked her Brioche recipe. The instructions were clear and easy. I am not going to post her recipe here... though I highly recommend visiting her site and trying it! I *will*, however, post my pictures.

Béa (the blogger, food stylist, cook, baker...) is French, and she posts recipes in English and French, and uses weights instead of just cups. This is a lovely thing when baking. I never realized, until I got my food scale, how off one can be when measuring flour, for example. I'd been to a King Arthur Flour seminar where they stressed the importance of "fluffing" your flour and spooning it into your measuring cup instead of scooping, which can pack the flour into your cup. I tried it. The weight difference was astounding.

Small plug for King Arthur... I never use anything but King Arthur Flour. Ok... it's $1 more/bag at the grocery store, but the gluten content is always the same, and the results never vary. Perfect pancakes on a Sunday morning every time! I was forced to buy [gasp] another brand a few weeks ago, and was punished with OK tasting, flat pancakes. [haha, flat as a pancake...] I grudgingly used it, but replaced it with KAF ASAP!! No more boring pancakes... back to the lovely, light, fluffy pancakes my family is ~~spoiled by~~ used to...

Anyway... the Brioche is wonderful. Light, airy and delicious. And the smell... oh... I so wish I could make this post scratch-and-sniff! My slight alterations to the recipe... I used my convection oven, so instead of 400C and 350C, I baked at 375C and 325C. My times were different as well, because of the convection and also the pans I used. I did not have a 10" loaf pan as shown in the recipe, so I used two Longaberger stoneware loaf pans. They're quite small. Actually, I had to remove a dough ball from each and add it to a small, round Longaberger crock, as I feared the rising dough would be too much for the little loaf pans.