[WBD 2023] Spiral Brioche

I'm writing this post for the 2023 World Bread Day organized annually by Zorra from the blog Kochtopf (danke sehr!). 

My contribution for this year's event is something that I've been wanting to make for a long time: a spiral brioche with two colors. The recipe I chose, uses a combination of chocolate dough and plain white dough. This is really yummy plain, some jam, chocolate spread, a nice schmear of cream cheese or butter. When toasted, this bread is even more delicious!

Soft and Fluffy Spiral Brioche

Make sure you check out the round up of all participants at the end of October!

ABC - No Knead Brioche

In May, the ABC bakers were challenged to bake a No Knead Brioche. I was quite intrigued when I saw this recipe on the Weekend Bakery blog. It's an enriched dough which means it has eggs, butter and a sweetener.

Soft and fluffy No Knead Brioche!

If you'd like to join the ABC bakers in their monthly baking adventures, please go to the ABC blog for more information.

TBB - Caramel Buns

Due to allergies, I would normally omit pecans from a recipe, if possible, and continue my merry way. But since my husband LOVES sticky buns, and he hadn't had any since before we got married, AND because it was our anniversary last week, I decided to put the pecans on one half of the dough, and make these Caramel Buns our anniversary treat.

Caramel Bun Fondue, anyone?

Fully dressed Caramel Bun for hubby. Look at that fluffy texture!

This will be a short and quick post. I've been really busy and additionally I'm participating in a club-level Toastmasters speech contest tomorrow (for which I have to practice just a little bit more tonight).

Brioche Braid

I had a hard time deciding which bread to bake for a dinner party last weekend. Does this every happen to you? So many recipes to choose from, right? Eventually, I settled on a recipe I had baked once before for the ABC baking project: Overnight Brioche Braid from The Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge. My guests loved it and raved about it. I immediately got recipe requests. And then after posting pictures of the bread on Facebook, I got more recipe requests.

I respect copyright laws and so I decided to ask Abby if she'd be OK with me posting her recipe on my blog. As sweet and gracious as she always is, she said Yes. I highly recommend getting a copy of her book. Years ago I borrowed it from the library, baked from it, loved the baked goods, and went ahead and got my own copy. I never regretted that purchase!!

Golden brown brioche on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside

ABC - Overnight Brioche Braid

My head hangs in shame over such a late ABC post. I'm not setting much of a good example, am I? What can I say? Life happens!!

This month's ABC project was not only fun but also very delicious. The Overnight Brioche Braid from The Weekend Baker was a big hit, not only with me but with many of the ABC bakers. My twist on the recipe was to add a generous amount of orange zest and some freshly ground cardamom to the dough. The aroma is so tantalizing that it makes your mouth water before you even put a bite in your mouth.

If you would like to join the ABC baking club, please email me at HanaasKitchen [at] live [dot] com. You can find more info about our baking club on the ABC blog.

Brioche Cake with Caramel Custard Cream

This post is way late, but better late than never :o) For our fifth Bread Bake-Together (BBT), Janis and I both wanted to bake a sweet yeast recipe to change things up a bit. The choice was easy: Brioche Cake with Caramel Custard Cream from "The Cake Book" by Tish Boyle. Doesn't that sound ridiculously good? :o)

So far I've baked a good handful of recipes from this book and loved each and everyone of them. Needless to say, I was very much looking forward to this recipe as well, especially since it's my first yeast recipe from Tish's book. She clearly mentions that the dough will be very soft and she wasn't joking. It was so soft that it was borderline soupy, but I carried on. To be honest, I was skeptical until the very end, but shouldn't have been. The Brioche Cake turned out great.

Look at all that fluffiness :o)

SMS #9 - Bee Stings

I'm back after a 2-week hiatus. Our vacation to Boston was great. As soon as I find some time, I'll post about that (teaser: whale watch excursion and America's Test Kitchen tour).

This week's SMS recipe, Bee Stings, was chosen by Jaime of Good Eats and Sweet Treats. After reading through the recipe late Saturday night, I was about to sit this one out due to the overnight refrigeration step. On Sunday morning, the idea of sitting out yet another SMS week, didn't sound right and so I decided to just skip the overnight refrigeration.


After only 21 minutes in a 350 F degree oven, the brioche buns were golden brown and delicious.


As you might remember from my Lemon Icebox Cake post, I'm not big on egg-y things so I wasn't going to make the pastry cream filling. Instead, I decided to make an eggless Butterscotch Pudding which I've been wanting to try for a while. I figured that the butterscotch flavor would pair well with the honey caramel glaze. Boy, did it ever! You can find the recipe for the pudding on Twitter ("Cookbook" does the coolest thing: all recipes fit within Twitter's 140 characters). Couple changes: omitted the whiskey, and added 1 tsp of molasses to intensify the butterscotch flavor.


Find the recipe for this week's Bee Stings here. Check out what other SMS bakers thought of this week's recipe. If you wish to join the SMS baking club, you'd better hurry. The membership cap is 50 and there are only a couple of open spots left.


Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby and I liked this pudding-filled brioche a LOT. He gave it an 8.5 out of 10. One of my close friends, an avid baker whose opinion I value very much, also liked them a lot. Needless to say, I highly recommend trying this recipe.
• The dough was a bit fussy. It didn't come together into a ball at all. I ended up using 8 Tbsp of extra flour (= 2 oz), bringing the total amount of flour I used to about 13 3/4 oz. This is why I ended up with 14 Bee Stings instead of 12.
  
• I used the dough cycle on my bread machine to make this brioche dough. This worked great.
• I like to use my microwave as a proofing box. So for the first rise, I placed a cup of water in the microwave and brought it to a boil. Moved the cup of water to one of the corners inside the microwave and placed my dough inside the microwave (in an oiled bowl, covered with plastic wrap). This warm and humid environment does wonders to yeast doughs.
• The honey caramel glaze was "the icing on the cake", hands down. I used orange blossom honey which was great! This glaze recipe could work well for other baked goods too, such as sticky buns.
• Would I make this recipe again? You betcha! I might even try the overnight refrigeration step for comparison purposes.