Brioche

Back to continental Europe for this week’s loaf...a recipe that is wonderfully simple and fantastically unhealthy. Even I started feeling uneasy while making this one.

Start out by proofing 3 3/4 teaspoons of yeast and 2 tablespoons of sugar in 1/2 a cup of warm water. While that is just sitting there, lightly beat 4 eggs in a bowl (you can already tell this is going to be an especially healthy loaf, no?), and add 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt. Then, and this is kind of gross just thinking about it, add 1 cup of melted butter...as in two full sticks; half of one of those half-pound packages from the supermarket. Ugh. Well, hopefully it’ll at least taste good in the end. Anyway, stir in 4 cups of all-purpose flour, and then…

Nothing! No kneading this week, which made me both a little sad and a little anxious about whether this was actually going to work. But the recipe just says to beat until smooth, so that’s what we’ll do. Put the almost-dripping blob of dough into a buttered bowl (although, with so much butter in the dough itself, you wonder if the extra is at all needed), cover, and let sit for the

First Rising (1 hour and 15 minutes)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ So, just a quick update here, in that I am in the office trying to get enough work done before joining some of my friends for a Memorial Day Weekend barbecue…So, let me just say that really, there are precious few things that I can say I’ve had more of here in the Midwest than I did, say, back in college - honestly, food-wise I’m running a pretty severe deficit in the areas of egg-and-bagels, “orange” chicken, “Aunt Vicki’s” beef brisket, smoothies, knock-you-nakeds, milkshakes (really, dessert in general!), etc.

But, as of last night, Illinois has outpaced Massachusetts in the fields of both cheese and chocolate fondues. And my tummy is awfully happy about that.
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Punch the dough down, and peel the rather sticky dough out of the bowl. Cut into two roughly equal halves, shape into loaves, and put into an 8x4 and a 9x5 bread tin. Recover, and let undergo the

Second Rising (1 hour and 10 minutes)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sometimes in life you are confronted with one of those moments that make you step back and think. The sort of moment when you suddenly recognize that you’re in some sort of rut, doing the same thing over and over, not out of desire or even some sort of conscious impulse, but out of sheer inertia. Not a pleasant sort of feeling.

So, like a bolt from the blue, just such a realization struck me while I was strolling down the pasta isle during my last trip to the grocery store. There it was, a vast array of green branded boxes, all identically priced, each carrying a different type of pasta. And here I was, reflexively just picking up another box of spaghetti. But why spaghetti? It was all I had ever gotten, but it’s not as though there’s some fundamental difference…they’re all made of the same stuff. (Note to any pasta purists reading this – yes, I’m sure there is some traditional use in terms of different sauces that go with each type of noodle…but at the level that I’m cooking, I feel quite confident in saying that it really doesn’t matter!) So, born that day was another goal I can work towards: not to buy another box of spaghetti until I’ve tried literally every other type of pasta at that store. First up: gemelli and rotini.
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Brush with cold water (actually, the recipe calls for the loaves to be brushed with a mix of egg yolk and milk…but but I used up the last of my eggs making the dough.) Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tasting verdict: I have to be honest, when I tasted this the very first thing that popped into my mind was the phrase "haha...too much" (quite specifically, as said by this guy, about 1:27 seconds in). I mean, it tastes delicious, almost as if it's halfway between a loaf of bread and an unsweetened cake. But you can feel the buttery-ness of the bread just by touching the crust, and you can feel hours spent at the gym slipping away with every bite. So, in sum, tasty, but not exactly a lunchtime sandwich bread...not quite sure what I'll do with these instead, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

Currently reading: Actually, I'm in between books at the moment...Anybody read anything good lately that they'd suggest?