Savory Brioche Pockets | Tuesdays with Dorie

This week the Tuesdays with Dorie group is baking Savory Brioche Pockets from page 421 of Baking with Julia, a book edited by Dorie Greenspan, and based on the PBS series, Baking with Julia (Child).

These brioche bread pockets contain a mixture of mashed red potatoes, goat cheese, chives, caramelized onions, and asparagus tips... a pretty amazing combination of flavors. They are topped with an egg wash, poppy seeds, and a sage leaf. Just to make them pretty. They are supposed to have this little rim around the edge and look like little pies. but my brioche had such great oven spring and ended up looking like dinner rolls. The contributing editor, Nancy Silverton (one of my idols... seriously, read her prose about bread baking in her book.. you will be hooked), suggests that these could be served as appetizers, but I had just one for dinner and it was quite filling.

Making these is pretty involved. First, you have to make the brioche dough and then allow it to ferment over night in the refrigerator. Oh yeah, and there's 30 minutes (thirty minutes!) of high speed kneading in your stand mixer.

After you make and chill the dough, you steam and mash the potatoes, par-cook the asparagus, and caramelize the onions.  Thankfully, once you shape the rolls, you can freeze them and bake them when you need them.

Verdict?

This brioche is the best I have ever tasted/made. Wow. I had some trouble working with it, but it doesn't matter. The texture and taste were perfect. Not heavy, not greasy, but light and airy despite the high butter content. I never understood the appeal of brioche hamburger buns... now I get it. I can't wait to try the portion of the dough that is in the freezer to make them.

What did I do differently from the original recipe? Not much. I nuked the the red potatoes without peeling them ( I used minis) and mashed the skins into the mix of potatoes and goat cheese, and I used the entire trimmed asparagus spear (the recipe calls for just the tips).

To see the recipe, visit Loaves and Stitches.  To see how other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers fared (and to see their creativity with the recipe) visit the Tuesdays with Dorie site.