What you need:
- 3 eggs
- 500g four (400g type 812 + 100g type 550 or such)
- 100g butter (unsalted)
- 10-15g of fresh yeast
- tablespoon of sugar
- teaspoon of salt
- a shot of white rhum
- 3 eggs
- a glass of milk (you can use plant milk, but it won’t be that nice and fluffy, fair warning)
How to make:
Evening before:
In a large bowl or pot combine yeast and sugar until the former has liquefied. Add eggs and beat them lightly, add the shot of rhum and milk, combine. Add pieces of butter – not warm, not overly soft, but do yourself a favour and cut them into really small pieces. Add flour and salt and knead for 10 minutes. Let the dough rest for an hour or bit more in a semi-warm place under a towel. Then do a second kneading-stretching of the dough – just turn it over a couple of times. Let it rest for another half an hour – hour. Put a cling film over the bowl and put the dough in refrigerator and let it rest overnight.
You can definitely start banking the bread on the same day, but for the sake of the taste
do.not.touch.the.dough.until.tomorrow
As with most types of really tasty bread, the main ingredient which makes or breaks the bread, is time.
Baking day:
Take the dough out – it should have doubled in size. Start heating your oven to 200 degrees. On a floured surface, divide the dough in 2 pieces. Now try to divide each of those in 3 smaller pieces. Stretch the pieces into long “sausages” of more or less equal size and form them as if you would braid hair. Put each into a separate bread form and cover them with a towel until the oven is hot enough. You can brush the bread with egg or milk, but it is not really necessary for taste. Put the forms in the middle rack and bake for 20-25 minutes. Take them out and let them cool for a bit (if you want to cut them with a knife) or enjoy straight as is, if you like to shred the bread with your hands 🙂
How much does it cost:
The amount of ingredients makes 2 full-sized brioches or around 15-20 mini brioches (bake them 10-15 minutes, depending on the size) and for what you get, the price is pretty neat. Cost of flour is negligible, around 40 cents, 100g butter is around 1,4 euros, eggs – depending what sort you use, currently they are in the range of 20-30 cents, going upwards, each – so ca 60 cents. Milk perhaps 20 cents. Sugar, salt, yeast – perhaps 10 cents total. Rhum? Maybe 50 cents?Add electricity and you come out of it with around 3,5 euros, tops. And your kitchen will smell like that fancy French bakery for hours.
A fair warning about rhum – don’t bother if you can´t get your hands on a nice white rhum. The usual varieties with pirate pictures tend to add weird astringency to the bread which I’m not really a fan of. I got a bottle of pretty cheap (15-20 euros a bottle) but good French rhum agricole from Martinique and this has done wonders to every dish that requires alcohol.
