Brioche

When the backyard chickens are laying full-swing, we end up with a lot of eggs. And what uses a lot of eggs? Brioche! This brioche recipe is from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home cookbook.

Thomas Keller explains that a brioche is sort of a cake-like bread and unlike other types of bread, this bread does use cake flour. One thing I didn’t know about the brioche was that it can simply be a loaf, and in this recipe he calls for a regular loaf pan or Pullman loaf pan. I always assumed a brioche was in the shape of a bun or knot, but I guess it refers to this specific type of enriched bread regardless of its shape. I used the Pullman loaf pan for this because I just love this pan. There’s just something satisfying about getting nice square corners and an all around beautiful crust.

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I’ve never tried any other brioche recipe so I don’t know if all brioche recipes are like this but this one was a long process and definitely requires planning ahead. But was it all worth it? Oh yes.

Not only did the bread taste sublime with a soft and flaky crumb, but after it had gone stale it made the most awesome french toast, EVER! To make french toast I always take stale bread and soak it overnight in the egg mixture (egg/milk/sugar/vanilla/rum or brandy) so you don’t just end up with fried bread covered in some egg mixture. With this brioche bread french toast I made it in the same fashion but it was a different experience from other breads. First of all, the moment you start frying the french toast it expanded like a marshmallow when you heat it up…I had never seen it do that! The texture was completely different too…it was like a pudding that was aerated into this fluffy and delicate cloud.