Let them eat cake! No, no, no...it was Brioche - The Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge...

And it may not have been Marie Antoinette who said this famous line...but back to Brioche. Brioche is a highly enriched french bread which has high egg and butter content which gives it a rich and tender crumb. In the The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread , Peter Reinhart has 3 versions of Brioche: Rich Man’s, Middle-Class and Poor Man’s Brioche. It’s all about the amount of butter...isn’t it always about the butter? The more butter - the better it is and the fatter you get. I chose the middle-class version for the challenge...still a lot of butter!

For those who know me, Peter Reinhart is my hero. I remember reading the Bread Baker’s Apprentice cover to cover and trying all the breads. I remember the day that I found out I was one of the army of recipe testers taking part in the recipe testing of his new book Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day: Fast and Easy Recipes for World-Class Breads , Dan didn’t know what happened to me. He thought I won the lottery!

The breads in his new book are fabulous and I can’t wait for the book to come out. Advanced copies are already being sold!
Because the BBA challenge has pretty relaxed rules and really doesn’t have deadlines...I have lagged behind a bit....maybe more than a bit ....but I can’t help it, I have my favourites that I keep going back to and at the end of the day...how much bread can we eat????

Brioche was my next bread in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge and the petites brioches à tête are my favourites. They look so nice and are soooooo good. You can make Brioche in a loaf pan or in a brioche pan. It makes the most delicious French toast in the world!  This isn't a difficult bread to make and well worth the effort.  Because we would do not want to hinder sales of the book, we will; not be posting the recipes, but Nicole of Pinch my Salt has great pictures of all the steps involved.
The next bread in the challenge is Castiello!

Until we bake again ...need to go walk off that butter :)
Penny