Chocolate Brioche the Rococo way

Enough “lite”, enough “healthy”. It’s Brioche time.

Beautiful Brioche

I’m not sure why I decided to make brioche. I have an ongoing fear of croissants that means I permanently want to make them but have never actually got on with it, and if croissant is a 9.0 difficulty in my head then Brioche is merely a 8.8.  Somehow though that 0.2bd (baking difficulty) is enough that late one night after work I decided that now was the time. I didn’t even have a recipe in mind. I hadn’t even checked I had enough butter.

Luckily, I knew two things: 1)since the Let’s make Christmas event at Rococo I have been hiding away (from Mr B) a little bag of Valharona caramelia chocolate for a bake which would do it justice, and 2) my mum had kindly bought me a bag of high quality 00 flour from the new Deli in Hitchin.

A chocolate tease

And so it was turned to  the book which came with the chocolate:  Rococo: Mastering the Art Of Chocolate by Chantal Coady.  It’s a beautiful book which comes in a special box and I have made recipes from it before, but I don’t think I’d appreciated until now how well it is written. If a recipe which is actually apparently very difficult (so said Chantal in a twitter conversation) can make me think it’s easy – well, that’s a skill. As far as I’m concerned, the hardest part of this recipe is waiting to bake and eat. It takes two days but there’s very little hands on time – 12 minutes to be precise  so long as you have your trusty dough hook. Obviously the quality of chocolate massively helps, as does the flour, but I couldn’t stretch to posh butter and these still tasted very very good. You really should have a go (I know I know, I always say that but you really should)

Look – it’s bread, I made it, and it rose!

Funnily enough, Blue Kitchen Bakes was also making Brioche at the same time as me, so we compared notes of impatience on twitter whilst waiting for the dough to prove. That’s what twitter is for.

Orion Books have added the recipe to their cookbook blog especially so that I can share this with you. How kind!

Alternatively you can purchase the book and get loads of other yummy recipes like this

I’m entering the following challenges :

Teatime Treats hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked which is  French Tarts, Cakes, Bakes and Pastries.

Classic French hosted by Blue Kitchen Bakes which is on brioche

Bake Your Own Bread

and  Yeast Spotting (Thanks to Blue Kitchen bakes for making me aware of it)