Design and Style
Bostock. A heretofore unknown [to me] recipe from eastern France. Brioche slathered with almond cream [fragipane], sprinkled with sliced almonds and baked. Good.
Raisin snails. Brioche dough spread with pastry cream and whiskey-soaked, flambéed raisins, all rolled up. Don’t these look like something you would purchase in a pastry shop? I used a rolling pin, which is when you know stuff is getting serious.
Both from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours.
Brioche turns out to be a little laborious. And almost half butter.
Lacking a stand mixer, I mixed the batch by hand (which I truly cannot recommend [I have a blister!]). Many hours of waiting for dough to rise (with winter reluctance), and giving dough the smackdown, and waiting some more, and putting it in a bread pan, waiting some more. Actually not a bad way to give structure to a day, if structure is lacking; I don’t know what I would have accomplished* today if not for this brioche.
*but ‘accomplish’ is such an ugly word, anyway.
It looks pretty much the thing:
Do you know what this means?
It means I made bread today.
Edible bread.
Why did I make brioche?
I really couldn’t tell you.
I find that baking can be mysterious in this way. And one has got to do something, after all.
I used the recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours.
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