Pull-Apart Brioche Bread

This pull-apart brioch bread is soft, light, flaky, buttery, and rich, all at the same time. 

 

Brioche bread is made with an enriched dough that is high in butter and and eggs. It can be sweet or savory, or somewhere in between. It's a tricky bread to make, and can either turn out light and delicate, or heavy and dense. 

It's all about the process. Once you've made the dough, there are so many options for using it, including sandwich buns, sticky buns, French toast, and in bread pudding.

Another option is to shape it into a brioche à téte, which is the traditional French way of shaping brioche. The bread is baked in an eight or nine inch fluted loaf pan, and a little bit of the dough is shaped into a ball and is placed on top of the center of the rest of the dough. 

You can also make mini brioche à téte.

Brioche can be made with varying amounts of butter and eggs, depending on how rich you want it to be. When I first started bread baking, one of the first versions I tried was Peter Reinhart's "Poor Man's Brioche." It has less butter, making it easier to work with. It's a great starter brioche to make. 

I have also made brioche with olive oil, which also produces a gorgeous and airy crumb. 

The key to achieving a soft and fluffy crumb is time, and the temperature of the butter as you add it. It's best for it to still be a little cold, so take it out of the refrigerator about 15 minutes before using it. 

Take your time adding the butter to the dough too, fully incorporating each piece before addeding the next one. The whole process takes about 10 minutes. 

Once the butter is incorporated into the dough, continue to knead the dough with your mixer for an additional ten minutes on medium high speed. The final dough should be smooth, stretchy, and bouncy. 

After the first rise, deflate the dough and refrigerate it overnight before shaping. 

You will definitely need a stand mixer, preferably fairly heavy duty because of the long mixing time. You will be rewarded with a lovely, light as air, loaf of brioche. 

Planning Ahead:

This bread is best the first day or two. If you plan to make it last longer, it's a good idea to freeze sections of the loaf until you're ready to use them. 

More Brioche from the Bread Bakers Group:

• Almond Cream Brioche Buns from A Messy Kitchen
• Brioche Pull-Apart Loaf from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Classic Brioche à Tête from Food Lust People Love
• Individual Orange Cranberry Brioche from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Single Rise Brioche Dinner Rolls from Sneha's Recipe

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board! If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send a note with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com

Pull-Apart Brioche

Yield: 32 slices

Author: Karen Kerr

Prep time: 1 HourCook time: 35 MinInactive time: 12 HourTotal time: 13 H & 35 M

This pull-apart brioch bread is soft, light, flaky, buttery, and rich, all at the same time.

Ingredients

• 226 grams (2 sticks/8 ounces) unsalted butter, taken from the fridge for 15 minutes and cut into 16 pieces, plus more for buttering the rising container.
• 476 grams (3 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
• 50 grams (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
• 4 teaspoons instant yeast - I used SAF Gold
• 1/3 cup room temperature milk (I used 2%), room temperature
• 1/3 cup water, room temperature
• 3 large eggs, room temperature and lightly beaten

For the glaze

• 1 egg, plus a splash of water, beaten

Instructions

One the First Day

1. Coat the interior of a 3-quart or larger container with softened butter.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Attach the bowl to the mixer along with the dough hook.
3. Mix the milk and water together in a measuring cup and, with the mixer on medium low, slowly pour the milk/water mixture into the mixer bowl. Mix on medium low for about 3 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl halfway through, if necessary. The dough will look like shaggy crumbs.
4. Continuing on medium low speed, slowly add the eggs. Once they have been added, increase the mixer speed to medium and beat for five minutes.
5. After the five minute mark, begin adding the butter, one piece at a time, and mix until each piece has been incorporated. Take you time. The whole process may take 10 to 15 minutes. Once all of the butter has been incorporated, increase the speed to medium high (about speed 6) and beat for 10 minutes. The final dough should be smooth and stretchy.
6. Form the dough into a ball and place it in the buttered container. Roll the dough over to coat with butter. Cover the container with plastic wrap and place it in a warm spot and let the dough rise until doubled, about 45 minutes to an hour. Stretch and fold the dough over itself from all four "sides" and place the the dough into the refrigerator.
7. After 30 minutes, stretch and fold the dough again and place it back into the fridge. Continue, every 30 minutes, to fold the dough until it becomes stiff, after about 2 hours. Place plastic wrap against the dough and cover the container with more plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight and up to 2 days.

On Baking Day

1. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and butter two 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch loaf pans.
2. Divide the dough into 16 equal sized pieces and roll each into a ball. Place eight balls into each pan, seam side down, into the loaf pans in a 2 by 4 pattern. Cover the pans with oiled plastic wrap. Let rise until the dough begins to crest the top of the pan, about 2 hours.
3. Heat the oven to 400 degrees F. When the loaves are ready to bake, lighly brush each with the egg wash.
4. Place the loaves in the oven and reduce the heat to 375 degrees F. Bake for 35 minutes, until the loaves are golden on top and reach an interior temperature of 200 degrees F.
5. Turn the loaves out onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

Nutrition Facts

Calories

124

Fat (grams)

7 g

Sat. Fat (grams)

4 g

Carbs (grams)

14 g

Fiber (grams)

1 g

Net carbs

13 g

Sugar (grams)

2 g

Protein (grams)

3 g

Cholesterol (grams)

33 mg

https://www.karenskitchenstories.com/2024/10/pull-apart-brioche-bread.html

Karen's Kitchen Stories

brioche

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Recipe adapted from Baking with Dorie by Dorie Greenspan.