February 4, 2024
In my culture, you got married after college, and then you got a KitchenAid, the holy grail of kitchen implements reserved for those elevated to the status of wife.
I did not follow this plan.
I remember declaring defiantly that when I graduated from law school, I would buck the system and honor my achievement by buying my own. Several years out of college, and a law degree, but no husband, in sight, my mom rocked by world by giving me a KitchenAid of my own. More than a mixer, this felt like my parents’ affirmation and blessing. I might not have achieved wife status, but they were proud of the path I had taken. I would be a single lawyer with sick domestic skills.
Over the years my trusty KitchenAid has been the source of countless baked treats, but none work it harder than brioche. Brioche is an “enriched dough,” in technical parlance. The bread you typically think of when you envision sourdough bread contains just a few ingredients, really just different kinds of flours, water and salt, + the x factor magic that comes from a culture of wild yeast and microbes developing naturally and having their way with the flour over time. Enriched dough typically adds fat and sweetener. To put it plain: brioche involves slowly mixing in a month’s worth of butter. Mixing it with my old KitchenAid is like an old horse dragging a heavily laden cart up a long hill.
But it’s worth it, because the end result is magical. Brioche dough is silky and sexy, glistening yellow from the egg yolks, shiny, alive. It whirls in the machine for ages, bunching up around the dough hook and slapping against the bowl with vigor until you can stretch it so thin you can see your fingers through the other side, “passing the windowpane test,” it’s called. Hello, fingers!
Then, the butter. Added slowly, in small increments; recipes emphasize only adding one pat after the previous one is fully integrated. Drop one in, let the machine slap it into streaks against the wall of the bowl, then mix it into oblivion in the dough, then do it again and again, til *every little molecule of dough wraps itself in a luscious fatty butter blanket that fills with air and, upon the heat of baking, is tossed upwards in a burst of enthusiasm, creating brioche’s signature airy crumb. (*Not a scientific explanation.)
My cookbook says this process should take approximately 15 minutes.
My 2006 Kitchen Aid, sorely in need of maintenance, takes a bit longer.
(to be continued)
