For weeks now I’ve been trying to find a recipe to make ‘Brioche’ like we have for breakfast every day when we visit Italy. They’re shaped like a croissant but it’s a sweet, bready, flaky pastry not at all like a croissant. They’re often filled with jam or chocolate too. Well, I thought I may have found a recipe for them… Unfortunately I was wrong. These damned things were an utter nightmare!
It started out badly enough with me failing to convert measurements correctly. No harm though, I realised early on enough for it to make no difference other than having 3 times as much dough as I had thought. After that it was just down to the recipe being a bad one. The dough was incredibly wet. Even the addition of flour didn’t help very much it was still an incredibly sticky dough, a right diva. It was almost impossible to work with at times, considering I had to roll it out and shape it that’s a real problem! It did give me the opportunity to use the Kenwood chef for the first time though. There was no way I was going to be able to knead it by hand but I gave the recipe the benefit of the doubt and thought that may be it would dry up a bit with kneading. Nope. Not a chance. This was a recipe seemingly by a professional too!
Added to that the fact that the ovens are having a tantrum at the minute made it all just a bit too stressful. Last night I cooked the test batch in the top oven at gas mark 5 for 25 minutes. Perfect. Today I tried to cook them in the same place for the same time at the same temperature and, well, you can see the picture. That’s somewhat more than a golden brown! They’ve been like this all week, utterly unreliable. Luckily they’re insured so we’re having someone come out to fix them, thank god!
I have to say, however, even thought the recipe was rubbish and the dough a nightmare to work with and in no way were these what I was trying to cook they turned out the be rather tasty. I’d never ever make them again but considering I have 3 baking trays worth I’m not too upset. Not that I’m posting the recipe here though, I’d never do something that evil to you all!
Anna in the kitchen 