Brioche for Françoise

I love making bread.  I love eating bread.  I love making enriched doughs.  I LOVE making brioche.  I love eating it with jam.  Pure and simple.  Cherry jam.  Yum.  I found out my lovely neighbour was not well.  So I thought yay!!!  I'll use this excuse to make her a brioche.  I made a few little ones for us but the big loaf is for Philippe and Françoise.  I'll pop it over when they get home.  Happy house, smells of vanilla sugar and lemon (which is my addition to make brioche even better- always).  

The recipe (very simple, all in one)

500gms flour (I used T55, it gave the best results but whatever you have is fine)

2 eggs

60gms butter

150gms milk

salt

50gms sugar

10 grams instant yeast

Vanilla sugar for sprinkling later

Egg wash (one egg whisked with a little milk)

zest of 1 lemon (or orange or seeds from a vanilla pod or fennel seeds and orange zest or whatever you like or plain).

Tip the flour into the bowl of a stand mixer, add the milk, eggs, break up the butter and add, add the salt, zest or flavour and sugar.  Give it a bit of a mix with the dough hook.  Then add the yeast.  Mix for about 6 minutes.  Until the dough is smooth and elastic.  Doing this by hand is fine, it just takes longer.

Cover with cling film.  Pop somewhere warm until doubled in size (or in the oven with the light on, this creates a warm protected environment).  

Once doubled (1hr 30 or so) knock it back, give it a bit of a kneed, then divide into portions or leave as one piece.  I divided some into smaller brioche for us and left the rest whole for my neighbour.  The larger loaf is simply plaited and joined at the ends to make a pretty round.

Pop everything onto an oven tray and cover with cling film.  Back into the oven with the light on for another 45 minutes.  Don't leave it much longer than that.  You don't want to over prove the dough. 

When nice and risen, take out of the oven and set it for 200deg c.  Brush liberally with egg wash, sprinkle with vanilla sugar, bake.  The small ones if they're around 100gms of dough each will take about 17 minutes.  The bigger one if it's about 500gms of dough will take about 25 minutes.  Viola!