Brioche (Butter-Rich Enriched Bread)

Name: Brioche (Butter-Rich Enriched Bread)
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 1 h 35 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 250 g strong white flour; 3 eggs; 30 ml milk; 30 g sugar; 5 g salt; 5 g instant dried yeast; 150 g unsalted butter; 1 egg yolk; 1 tbsp milk

The French bread that carries more than half its flour weight in butter. Success and failure are decided not by how much butter but by when it goes in and how warm the dough gets: the gluten has to be built first, the butter goes in cold and in stages, and past 24°C there is no way back.

Ingredients

8servings

Dough (one loaf tin, or 8 buns)
strong white flour · 12% protein or more; it has to carry the butter250 g
eggs · about 150g, cold — the eggs are the liquid in this dough3
milk · cold30 ml
sugar30 g
salt · kept away from the yeast in the bowl5 g
instant dried yeast5 g
unsalted butter · 60% of the flour weight; cold, cut into 1cm cubes150 g
Egg wash
egg yolk1
milk1 tbsp

Steps

Put the flour, sugar, salt and yeast in the bowl (salt and yeast on opposite sides, not touching), add the cold eggs and milk and knead 8–10 minutes. No butter yet. At this point the dough is stiff and smooth and the gluten is already built.
⏲ 10 min
Add the cold butter in three or four goes, waiting until each addition has completely disappeared before the next. Ten to fifteen minutes in all. Fat coats the gluten strands and stops the network forming — which is why butter added at the start leaves a dough that never comes together. The order is the recipe.
⏲ 15 min
Check the dough temperature as you go. Stop if it passes 24°C: put the whole bowl in the fridge for 20 minutes and carry on afterwards. A stand mixer heats the dough by itself, so pausing is normal procedure, not a setback. Once the dough looks greasy and butter is weeping out of it you are already too late, and that cannot be undone.
⏲ 20 min
Knead until smooth, glossy and able to stretch thin, then round it and prove 1 hour at room temperature. Not doubled — stop at about half again.
⏲ 60 min
Cover and refrigerate at least 8 hours, ideally overnight. This is not only about flavour: at room temperature brioche dough is too soft, because of the butter, to shape at all. It has to be cold and firm to be handled.
Divide into eight pieces of about 100g and round them. For brioche à tête, pinch off a quarter of each piece as a small ball, make a deep hole in the middle of the big one with a finger and press the small ball in. For a Nanterre, set the eight pieces in a loaf tin in two rows.
Prove 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours at room temperature, until the dough rises just above the rim of the tin. It starts cold, so taking longer than an ordinary bread is normal.
⏲ 105 min
Mix the yolk with the milk, brush the surface, wait 10 minutes and brush again. The second coat is what gives the deep shine.
⏲ 10 min
Bake at 170°C for 30–35 minutes. That is lower than for ordinary bread — the sugar and butter brown far faster, so at 200°C the outside burns before the middle is done. 90°C in the centre is the marker; cover with foil if it colours too quickly.
⏲ 35 min
Turn it out and cool completely on a rack. While it is hot the butter in it is still liquid, and cutting then crushes the crumb.
⏲ 60 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Brioche Nanterre: eight pieces baked in two rows in a loaf tin. Easier to shape than à tête and the better form for sandwiches and toast.
Brioche mousseline: butter pushed to 80–100% of the flour weight. The dough is nearly a batter and gets poured into a tall cylindrical mould. The 60% here is hard enough — this is not where to start.
Less butter: at 40% it is much easier to handle and still brioche. Worth starting there the first time. Below about 30% it drifts towards a plain egg loaf.
Chocolate chips or raisins: fold them in after the cold proof, just before shaping. Added during kneading, chocolate melts and muddies the dough.
Small à tête: 40g each, baked only 12 minutes. More surface area colours faster, so drop to 160°C.
Leftovers are the proper bread for French toast — it drinks the custard far better than a sandwich loaf, and day-old and dry is actually better.

Tips

The butter goes in after the gluten is built. If you keep one thing from this recipe, keep that. Fat coating the gluten strands stops the network forming, so a dough with all the butter in from the start stays crumbly however long you knead it (dough and gluten).
Temperature is the second gate. Past 24°C the butter melts and separates out, and no amount of chilling puts it back. Use cold eggs, cold milk and cold butter, and treat stopping the mixer to refrigerate the bowl as procedure rather than failure (dairy and heat).
It is the opposite of a croissant in how the butter goes in. A croissant wants the butter to stay in sheets, and butter mixing into the dough is the failure. Brioche wants the butter completely dispersed. Both are ruined by warm butter, for opposite reasons — the croissant because the layers smear together, the brioche because the butter refuses to mix and separates out.
The overnight chill is not optional. Bagels get a cold overnight proof too, but for a different reason: there it forms a skin so the dough does not loosen in the boiling water, and here it firms a dough that is otherwise far too soft to shape (fermentation basics).
Do not wait for doubling on the first prove. A dough this rich cannot hold its structure if over-proofed and collapses in the oven. Stop at about half again and move it to the fridge.
Drop to 170°C. Sugar and butter bring the colour much sooner, so ordinary bread temperatures burn the outside before the middle is cooked (what your oven is doing). A crust as dark as the photo is correct.
Egg wash twice. One coat gives colour but a shallow shine.
Cool completely before cutting. While it is hot the butter is liquid and the cut face compresses. Brioche is a bread that sets its crumb as it cools.
Keeping it: two days airtight at room temperature. Beyond that, slice and freeze, and toast from frozen. The fridge is the worst option — it is the temperature at which starch stales fastest.
"Let them eat brioche" was not Marie Antoinette. The line (qu'ils mangent de la brioche) appears in Rousseau's Confessions attributed to a different royal, and that passage was written before Marie Antoinette arrived in France in 1770. The attribution to her is later and has no contemporary basis.