Sweet Chocolate Bites

Bouchees Gourmandes au Chocolat

(Sweet Chocolate Bites)

Well, the brioche fun continues...I made a big batch of brioche dough last week-end with a bit of whole wheat mixed in (see earlier post). Too much to use up at once. So I kept the leftover in the fridge in a zip-lock bag for about 5 days. According to the website Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, that's the limit before freezing the dough. No problemo ! I've been tempted to make chocolate croissants with the brioche dough for a while. I do love my chocolate :) To make sure I had enough dough to share the sweets, I decided to go for the bite-size category. Easy to sample, great for a guilt-less snack, and fun for kids to bite into.

After days in the fridge, dough was not sticky anymore. It was like playing with soft clay. So I took small pieces, flattened them in a circles, filled them up with semi-sweet chocolate chips (the kind you use for cookies), wrapped the chocolate chips with dough and rolled the dough into a ball between my hands. When all the dough was used, I whipped an egg with a tablespoon of sugar and some vanilla flavoring, and I thoroughly brushed the egg glaze all around the dough balls to get that shiny light brown color.

Before

After

After baking at 375F for about 30 minutes (overkill, I got distracted by the dog), I obtained a full tray of bite-sized buns with a heart of melted chocolate ! I noticed the buns did not rise much. It could be because of the dough freshness or because I flattened it in the process.

While best out of the oven, the buns can be heated up in a microwave for 20 seconds to recapture that hot and fresh taste with oozing chocolate. One can imagine replacing the chocolate chips for other appropriate fillings, including jams, peanut butter, white chocolate, etc...or mixture thereof !

Great for breakfast, morning or afternoon snacks, you can slide a few in your pocket to enjoy later. And if you've got more to spare, don't forget your friends !

Put some fiber in your diet

Another week-end, another brioche exercise ! I love getting up on Sunday morning with the buttery smells of a warm brioche. With some cherry jam and a hot chocolate. It's as if the time stops while I savor my breakfast and read the Sunday newspaper. Today was no exception.
Flashback to Saturday. I was so looking forward to my Sunday breakfast, I rushed through the kitchen, whipping up that brioche dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (and let me reiterate, it is a wonderful recipe ! Easy, fast, highly reproducible. A must-keep). It was to be a 10 minute affair until, gasp, I ran out of flour ! One cup missing. First it was the honey, I compensated with some regular sugar. But the flour ? Grumble, grumble, grumble...Oh wait I have whole wheat flour. Bam ! The last cup with whole wheat. Now I can have my fiber and eat it too :)
As it turned out, the brioche tasted just the same. Except it had little specks of whole wheat. It makes me wonder how much flour I can substitute for whole wheat to make my breakfast experience a bit healthier. There is always next week-end !

The Brioche Wars, Part 2

Pass on the jam !

And so I went on, mounting my faithful destrier Google on a crusade for a good brioche recipe...

Oh I found many. It seems everyone and their mother have one to share with you. That's the good news, I did not have to travel far. But which one do I choose? Trying them all is nearly impossible, I needed a strategy, a method to weed them out to the One.

After reading a few, I noticed a common theme: lots of kneading. While fun at first, kneading can become a chore and is not appropriate for everyone. That became my first (and only) selection tool. The remaining recipes fell into two categories:

- bread machine, for easy kneading and rising

- no kneading

My first attempt used a bread machine and its own brioche recipe. I wasn't thrilled with the result. I was yearning for something different. The no-kneading recipe got me really curious. Would it be possible to cut out the kneading part and still come up with a fluffly brioche ? Brioche pans in hand I accepted the challenge, raided the fridge for butter and warmed up the oven.

I settled for a recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, a busy site full of recipes and matching pictures. Head out to Brioche Dough for ingredients and directions. Though amounts are to make 4 loaves, they claim the dough can be kept in the fridge up to 5 days, and the remainder can be frozen for later use. Imagine making the dough on Saturday, then waking up early on Sunday and wake up your honey, or your family, with wafts of freshly baked brioches in just 30 minutes. Could it be any better?

Well, it can. Simply put, all you have to do is beat the eggs, add all the other liquids (including melted butter and dissolved yeast), then incorporate the flour by portions while stirring with a wooden spoon. Leave the dough rising in a warm spot for 2 hours then chill it in the fridge for an hour. I used it right after an hour in the fridge and overnight, I saw no difference. Once in the oven the dough more than doubled in size in both cases. Make sure to brush the top with an egg glaze (1 egg+ 1 tps sugar) for a brown coloration.

Best consummed right out of the oven, the brioche is still soft and chewy after a day. But I doubt it'll last longer than that :)

Below are some pictures. I used up all the dough over the week-end, ending with a braided brioche.

Happy baking !!!

Gearing up for the Brioche Wars

I decided I did not have the right tools to mount my second assault. Not that it wouldn't change the outcome much, but having shiny new brioche pans does boost the confidence a bit, and they look so neat in the oven. So my first stop was at a local kitchen specialty store I recently discovered.
If you are not from San Diego, don't fret, they have an active online presence at http://great-news.com/. Name of the store is "Great News!", a good omen. Once inside, my shopping cart suddenly started piling up with all kind of things I always wanted but never dared to buy. I am now the proud owner of a madeleine pan, and I almost got a set of individual tartlet pans. Some silicon cake molds looked really cool, but I resisted. The back of the store offers cooking classes with a full kitchen. I am not sure whether the kitchen is for the instructor, a la Martha, or students can use it as well. I signed up for their Newsletter, I'll take a peek at their class schedule, maybe something will pick my interest.
With my new brioche pans in hand I did another brioche try. Got a nice shape. I added some wheat gluten too to up the chewiness. But I had the darnest time making the dough rise. I turned quite chilly suddenly in San Diego. I ended up putting the dough on top of the dryer while doing laundry ! It helped a bit but not enough.
My next step is hunting down some tricks to make the crust so light and brown. Mine turns too hard for my taste. Stay tuned.

"Brioche" is hard !

That's my goal ! Fluffly and buttery, with a light brown coat that spells "Eat me !"

My first try. Yep, room for improvements !!!!

Technically, it was my second attempt. My first was what started this brioche race I am embarking on. You see, I have this idealized version of a brioche from my youth. Soft, buttery, shaped like a mushroom, and a perfect brown. A baker's brioche ! I set out to make one the other day, using my bread machine. Yes, I was being lazy...I left the kneading to the machine...What a disappointment ! The recipe came right from the bread machine book. Bahhhhh ! Too dense and hard. No brioche, just another yeasty bread...

So that is the backdrop to the little experiment I did tonight, aka my first "real" try at brioch-ing. This time I used a recipe from a french book (what was I thinking the first time????) and my bare hands for the hard work. That piece of art right above is 100% me, sweat and all.

And I like it ! OK, it lacks in shape and color. But the smell while it was baking was divine ! You know, that hot buttery yeasty smell that lingers in bakeries? I was salivating. As soon as it was cool enough to manipulate safely (oww, oww, hot), I tried a piece. Soft and buttery ? Check. Slight yeast taste ? Check. Another piece ? Double check. The dog gave two paws up and opened his mouth for more.

So I have to work on my presentation skills. First stop will be at the store for a brioche pan. But for now, I know what I will be having tomorrow for breakfast...:)