Brioche bread texture

Question

I made a loaf of brioche today following a French recipe. Here's how it looks: I don't like its texture. It's bland and a bit dry. Honestly, the taste of overnight-proof bread is not very atractive to me (perhaps because I used instant yeast instead of fresh yeast???).

Here's the recipe I used:

50ml milk

6g instant yeast

2 large eggs

250g bread flour (13% protein)

125g unsalted butter

50g sugar

1g salt

I kneaded the dough with hand mixer and checked with windowpane test. The dough was soft, and almost not sticky because of butter.Then I covered the dough with plastic wrap and let it proof at room tempearture for 2 hours, deflated, then covered and let it proof in the fridge overnight (around 10 hours).

After shaping in the mold, I let it proof again for another hour. Finally, I baked at 170°C for 30 minutes, and 160°C for 10 minutes.

How should I improve it? If anyone has a brioche recipe that is soft, moist, flavorful and buttery (like Harry's brioche), it would be great.

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

I am pretty certain you simply overbaked your brioche. "Bland and dry" is a very common symptom of that. Also, if we look at the recipe, you had a quite small loaf, which you baked for 40 minutes.

The first solution I'd try in your place is to bake to internal temperature of 96C, then remove immediately from the oven and swaddle in a kitchen towel, possibly spraying with water before covering.

The other things you can do are finer tweaks, but they shouldn't have that much of an effect on the dryness as such. You have way too much yeast, especially for an overnight raise. I've read books that suggest using more yeast for a brioche, but that's because they also have a shortened raise and/or baking from cold (to keep the very buttery dough firm when forming). I personally don't care much for long rests, so I would maybe reduce the yeast only partially (maybe using 2.5 to 3 g) and do two raises at room temperature, as with normal white bread. If you want to keep the retardation, then use less yeast, about 1.25 g. But since your dough is neither under- nor overproofed, the amount of yeast shouldn't have much impact on texture, mostly on aroma only.