Day 18: Brioche

First things first, I have to let you know about my Sunday night girls dinner.  Four girls from my class and I went out for dinner to a famous Paris steakhouse called Le Relais de l'Entrecote.  The atmosphere was kind of like a New York Steakhouse with a lot of wood and brass everywhere and all of the waitresses wore your typical French maid uniform.  When we sat down we were immediately given a lettuce salad with a dijon mustard vinaigrette and asked by the waitress how we'd each like our steaks cooked.  She also took our beverage order and we ended up with a bottle of the house red wine and a carafe of water.  Next the waitress cleared our salads and served us dinner.  Our plates were filled with a thin steak cut into strips resting in a thick brownish sauce that tasted like a dill bernaise sauce and a heap of french fries.  After we'd finished our steaks we were immediately offered seconds on the dinner course.  Finally, since there was only one choice for our dinner we were given an extensive dessert menu with at least 20 items on it and asked if we'd like a sweet and/or coffee.  We shared some ice cream, some chocolate cake, and a lemon tart, none of which were as good as things we had made at school.  It was an interesting experience and fun for a group, but not necessarily as gourmet as you'd expect considering we had to wait in line 20 minutes for a table on a Sunday at 9pm.

Anyway, Monday morning came bright and early and we learned how to make brioche.  We had made the dough for our brioche on Saturday after the croissants and had left our dough in the refrigerator to rise a bit over the weekend.  For those of you who don't know, brioche is a soft, light yeast dough similar to challah bread.  It is a little bit sweet and traditionally served as a breakfast food with butter or jam.  Mine looked very nice, but definitely needed to be mixed with something or have a spread on it to be fully enjoyed.  Brioche is usually baked in a special molds and is formed into specific shapes.  We each made one loaf pan of brioche, one round fluted pan of brioche with a round head on top, and two mini round pans with small heads on top.

My loaf of Brioche

My Traditional Brioche

We also rolled out the brioche and layered it with pastry cream and raisins and made raisin buns.  They were pretty good considering I do not usually like raisins in my bread.  One of the other groups got to fill their buns with pastry cream and chocolate chips, theirs were delicious!  If I ever made these rolled up buns at home I'd either fill them with chocolate chips or I'd fill them with pastry cream and a heavy layer of cinnamon.  I think both of those options would be delicious.

My Raisin Buns

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!