Organic Cotswold Brie Brioche

These Brioche Parisienne buns make for an interesting cheese course!

For my tasting menus I used to try and introduce people to all the amazing ingredients you can find in the Cotswolds. Once, in between dropping off frozen meals around Stow-on-the-Wold I stopped by Kirkham Farm near Upper Slaughter where they make Simon Weaver's range of cheeses. One of the workers stopped production to serve me. Interesting to see how it's made, and the volumes!

That's the great thing about the Cotswolds - you can pick ingredients up straight from the farm - always interesting to hear production stories first hand.

Here they are in action!

Brie Brioche Recipe 
You can make these plain, without the cheese. Or change the brie for chocolate chips or date & walnut. You can use fresh yeast, but I found Doves Farm instant dried yeast very easy to use and easy to keep on hand.
I got the brioche tins from a charity shop back in 2006 - charity shops are great places to find kitchen equipment bargains.
The recipe I use is from the Bread book by Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno which I have modified slightly to make in my trusty Kenwood Mixer rather than making by hand. I started off making bread by hand, but then I was making so much I couldn't keep up and turned to the mixing machine for help.

Stuff
375g Strong bread flour - try Shipton Mill
2 1/2 tsp Dried yeast
2 tbsp Caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp Salt
5 eggs, beaten up
175g Unsalted butter, softened + extra to brush the brioche tins
Eggwash - either whole egg and a drop of water, or just the egg yolk with a dash of water
Organic Cotswold Brie, cut into pieces - judge the size by the size of the brioche tins

Things

1. If you're using a mixing machine with dough hook, add the flour to the bowl with the dried yeast , sugar and salt. Add the beaten eggs and mix on the slowest setting for 10 minutes to knead till the dough is soft and elastic.
2. Cover with a tea towel and leave for 1 - 1 1/2 hours till risen and doubled in size. Knock back, then leave for 10 minutes. 
3. Add the softened butter and mix in on slow speed. Once the butter is incorporated keep going on slow speed for 5 minutes for a second kneading, then rest for another 5 minutes. 
4. Grease 10 brioche tins (8cm diameter, 5cm deep) with the extra softened butter. 
5. Divide the dough in to 10 pieces with a pastry scraper. We're making these into cottage style buns, so then cut each of those 10 pieces into 2 so you have one large piece for the base and 1 small piece for the top - roughly 3/4 and 1/4. 
6. Roll the brioche base in your hands till round and smooth. Place in the greased brioche tin.
7. Place a piece of brie on top as the picture above and press down slightly so it stays in position. 
8. Roll the smaller brioche dough ball and sit it on top of the brie. Press down slightly so it sticks to the base. Make sure the piece of brie is covered by dough. 
9. Allow to prove for 30 minutes-ish. This depends on the heat of room the dough is in - if it's cold it takes longer, if it's a hot summer's day it will be faster. They should double in size.
10. Brush the tops with egg glaze. Place on a baking tray and bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 oC until glossy and golden. Turn out and leave on a wire rack.

Note:  Oven temperature may vary depending on your oven. The original recipe says 220 oC. I found 200 oC worked well in my Blue Seal Turbofan oven.

For the brie brioche buns above I served them with an extra slice of brie so you've got the contrast to the baked one in the brioche. Then garnished with caramelised orange, pickled fig, pickled cherry, walnut and dried barberries (from the Turkish shop).

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Wheat free and gluten free baking

Another Saturday and another outing for the bistro menu. For one party there were two guests on wheat free and gluten free diets. As the idea of choosing two starters was to swap them with their partners half way through, both the red onion tarts and the blinis for the smoked trout were made with wheat free flour (see below) and I made some wheat free walnut, raisin and rosemary bread rolls too. In all the best gluten free baking I have done so far.


Even if you are not on a gluten free diet this pastry is really worth making - with the potato in it crisps up and the rice flour adds a great flavour too. It's quite like parmesan shortbread. Next time I make it I'm going to add parmesan too. It's not for the faint hearted though - it can be quite breakable. But the good thing about it is because there is no gluten content it doen't really shrink when cooking, so you can cut it out to the size of your baking tin, and any holes you patch up will stay patched up as it cooks.
I remember the first time I used this recipe and didn't use the xanthan gum - I had a few kitchen nightmares that day. You really need the xanthan gum for this to help it glue together.
There's more about the St. Agnes tart in a previous post.



Unlike normal bread this is quite a moist mix (500g of flour to 420ml water) so it is mixed in the electric mixer rather than by hand kneading.

A third rice flour, a third tapioca flour and a third potato flour for these and a couple of teaspoons of xanthan gum (which replaces the effect of the gluten), 7g intant dried yeast and 1 tsp salt, sugar and baking powder.

I mixed in the walnuts, raisins and rosemary after this and left it to prove before rolling out. To roll out you need to flour your hands really well with rice flour as the dough is very soft. Remember to use rice flour as well to sprinkle on the tray to stop them sticking - easy to use normal flour out of habit, and then you have to start again.

They came out really smooth which is amazing for gluten free bread and tasting great with all those ingredients. If you are going to keep them they start to go hard even if kept in an airproof container so you just need to 'refresh' them in the oven, microwave or by toasting them before eating them.


I used the same rice/ tapioca/ potato flour mix in place of normal flour in my blinis recipe and added a couple of teaspoons of xanthan gum as well. Again, the different tastes of the flours was really good.

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1001 Kitchen tips #46 - Which one is non-dairy/ vegan/ no nuts etc.

With such a busy Saturday with food going to so many different places I knew mixing up the normal chocolate tarts and the one no dairy version would be easy to do. Mistakes like this after you have worked so hard to make everything perfect are the worst.

So to make sure it didn't happen, I made the one no dairy choclate tart in a round tin, and the others in my normal fluted tins - that way, there was no mistaking it.

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