Making your own French brioche is a festive activity and one that might even impress a few people…
There are a lot of different recipes and methods and we tried several of them with varying results. This recipe is a winner with us. It doesn’t take a lot of your time. But it’s a two stage one, so keep in mind you have to plan in advance and start Friday to have your Brioche for Saturday’s brunch.
Even though it’s a simplified version of the classic French recipe, the taste and texture have convinced us more than the brioches we recently tasted in France. And with brioche freshness is key. You bake it, you eat it. But it’s hard to imagine there will be anything left ones you put it on the table. We like it with fresh butter and raspberry jam.
Ingredients for the Brioche
makes 1 Brioche loaf
375 g fine bread flour (we use French Type 55)
60 ml lukewarm milk
3 large eggs
7 g instant yeast
7 g salt
40 g fine sugar
100 g soft dairy butter
Making the Brioche
This is a two stages recipe because the dough has to rest in the fridge overnight.
First day: Combine flour, salt, sugar and milk in a mixing bowl. Attach the dough hook to your mixer and add yeast, then the eggs one by one and after that the butter in chunks, and mix until you have a smooth and rather sticky dough. Keep mixing for 9 minutes. If you use a KitchenAid use speed 2. Remove the dough from the bowl (do not worry about the stickiness, after a night in the fridge it will be OK) and transfer to a greased bowl, cover with clingfilm and put in the fridge overnight.
NB: The amount of moisture you have to add to your dough can vary depending on the flour you are using. You can find a lot of information about different flour types (American vs European) and peoples experiences on the internet (The Fresh Loaf, King Arthur).
Second day: Get the dough from the fridge about 30 minutes before you want to shape it so it can acclimatise and it feels OK to handle and shape. Now you can shape the dough in many ways, a classic brioche (big ball with smaller ball in hole on top) a loaf shape or several small brioches. Or you can make 6 equal sized balls, and arrange them in a bread pan (mine is 26 cm x 13 cm or 10.2 x 5.1 inches), or make a cluster of 8 or 9 balls that fit together in a round tin (see pictures). Cover with floured clingfilm.
Now you have to be patient because the proofing will take about 3.5 hours at room temperature. Preheat your oven at 200º C (390º F). Now adjust your oven to 190º C (375º F) for the first 10 minutes, then lower to 160º C (320º F) for another 20 minutes. Take the brioche out of the oven and immediately transfer from the pan onto a cooling rack.
Gary says
Dear Ed & Marieke
I hope that the break you are taking is enabling you to focus on your family and that things are moving in a positive way.
I appreciate you are not reading these comments but I just wanted to say I followed your recipe last night and today and the Brioche came out fantastic !!!
I have followed other recipes of yours on this website with same amazing results.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience so that others like me can benefit.
Christina says
I have made the dough using APF but the dough was not sticky. After incorporating the butter it was pretty smooth. I kneaded with my hand since I don’t have a mixer. Will it be okay?
Weekend Bakers says
Well that sounds alright Christina, hope it went well and you got a nice brioche!
Shivani says
Hi Can we use all purpose flour instead of bread flour?
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Shivani,
Yes you can do this for this recipe, that will be fine.
Shivani says
Should I also do an egg wash? Is there any alternative to egg wash to avoid the eggy smell?
Weekend Bakers says
You do not need an egg wash, you can do it without any type of wash or use milk or brush with a bit of melted butter after baking.
HS says
I would like to ask if you know anything about the Greek tsoureki that is similar to the brioche but at the same time very different. Because your recipes are amazing, I would like to know if you have any recipes for Greek tsoureki.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello HS,
We have heard of this bread, mad during Easter we believe, but never made it ourselves. We think (but we do not know for sure) the difference is due to the addition of ingredients like mastic or Arabic gum and a spice called mahlep or mahalepi a type of kernel from the seed / stone of a cherry which is ground into a fine powder and added to the dough. It would be wonderful to try is out of course, but especially the mahlep will be a challenge to find.
Maybe this recipe is a good starting point:
www.mygreekdish.com/recip…ter-bread/
Let us know when and if you are going to make it. Would be great to learn more about it.
Enjoy your baking and be safe!
Ed & Marieke
WKB
Katanahamon says
After my success with your recipe for classic croissants, by Jeffrey Hamelman, I bought his second edition of “Bread,” and the first recipe I tried was brioche feuilletee. Unfortunately his recipes start with an industrial amount, then titrate down to a home recipe, which can still be huge. (9 eggs, 4 sticks butter in the dough..I got six loaves out of it.!) His recipe adds a lamination to the already rich dough, and dividing each into three strips, filling each strip with a nut filling, then braiding and forming a loaf. I was skeptical putting the dough together, but, the results are amazing. I’m betting there are infinite variations on how much butter goes into the dough vs the lamination. Perhaps you guys will do an article on it?
Weekend Bakers says
Very nice and a great book! We know what you mean by getting it back to the right trial amount. Six of these loaves is no problem, looking at the end result: www.weekendbakery.com/your-loafs/
Wish we could take a bite. Butter content can vary from small to enormous amounts. But there’s always a sweet spot to be found for your own taste. We do not know where that would be for laminated brioche, but you can already take a guess at what you would change or not for a second attempt.
If you want to find more inspiration for pastry we can recommend ‘advanced bread and pastry’ by Michel Suas. It will contain (almost) everything you would want to learn about the subject.
Melissa says
Amazing!!! This recipe is not from this world!!! I used all purpose flour and left this lovely dough at RT for an hour and then put in frig overnight!! Huge success!!!
Thank you again WB…
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you Melissa,
Hooray again, so pleased about this, because it is a firm favorite with us and it only adds to the joy to know the recipe works so well for so many other bakers.
Enjoy your baking and sharing!
Ed & Marieke
Karen says
I made this recipe last week. It was so easy and tasted really good. American recipes often don’t turn out well for me. I think they have too much liquid as their flour is different and I need to adjust for European flour. All of your recipes that I try turn out well. Thank you for sharing all of your hard work so we can all make good bread
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you so much Karen, very glad our recipes work so well for you across the big pond.
Wishing you many happy hours of baking and sharing and a wonderful fall and winter baking season!
Ed & Marieke
Weekend Bakers
Maria says
Just discovered this site! Wonderful clearly written recipies. I think I will try the no knead brioche first.
Question: does the bread pan have to be greased prior to putting in the dough?
Thank you from Montreal, Canada
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Maria,
Thank you so much for your comment. We always use a pan coating (vegetable) spray for our pans and tins. We do not know what pan you are using but with almost all bread pans it is a good idea to coat / grease them before putting in the dough.
Hope you like the no knead brioche!
Greetings from Holland
Douglas says
You mention in the no-knead variant but not here. Do you do an egg wash before putting it in the oven followed by a butter wash when you take it out?
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Douglas,
As you can see in the pictures, we did not do an egg wash with this one, but you can do it of course with this recipe too. It would be either an egg wash or the butter brushing that we would do, not both (but the ‘or’ somehow was missing from the instruction, so we corrected it. Thank you for letting us notice :O
Happy brioche baking!
Jose says
Best recipe I’ve ever found for the brioche
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Jose, we are very happy to hear this, thank you so much for your feedback!
Happy baking from Holland,
Marieke & Ed
Rusty says
There is little more annoying than providing recipes that require bakers to measure ingredients in grams for an American audience as we do not, by custom, use this measurement system. Perhaps giving both grams as well as American measurements would be more thoughtful. To that end:
2 ½ cups of fine bread flour (we use French Type 55)
¼ cup lukewarm milk
3 large eggs
2 ¼ tsp instant yeast
1 1/3 tsp salt
½ cup + 2 T fine sugar
7 tbl soft dairy butter
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you Rusty,
As bakers, we very much recommend weighing your ingredients. We understand home bakers are not used to this in the US, but a scale will give you the exact same weight every time, which is absolutely needed if you consistently want to make good bread and especially good pastry. Because measuring utensils are not always accurate and measuring can give deviations between 10 and 20% from one bake to the next, baking results can be disappointing. For these reasons we want to encourage people to use scales if possible.
Christine says
Thank you for staying consistent with suggesting that bakers use weight as their means of measurement. I am in the US and wish more recipes would be written without volume as its form of measurement. Most times I just choose not to try the recipe as I recognize that my results may be different than the author intended. Sometimes I weigh everything and take the extra step of rewriting the recipe. For those who are use to volume measurements, once you start weighing your flour and salt, you will find the process so much easier and accurate. Increasing or decreasing the recipe is also much easier in grams.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Christine,
Thank you so much for your encouraging comment. Of course we understand it is hard to change something you probably grew up with, but we will keep on trying to motivate people that using scales will improve their results. With professional chefs and bakers (on TV and in books and recipes) leading the way, we are sure more and more home bakers will follow.
We admire you for your efforts and hope and expect you are rewarded for it.
Wishing you many happy baking moments!
Ed & Marieke
Fong says
Just made this recipe without changing anything! What a great brioche recipe and yummmzz! Will definitely make it again with a little bit more butter . The color is beautiful too!
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you Fong,
A bit more butter will not hurt this recipe 🙂
Happy baking and eating!
Christine Willers says
Is your Brioche recipe suitable for buns rather than a loaf for example homemade burgers?
I thought about following your round Brioche method but keeping the dough balls separate but not sure about second prove or cooking times.
Veel dank en groeten van het seizoen!
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Christine,
Yes, you can make buns no problem. Proofing time will be a bit shorter, but you really need to judge this based on what you see, because it also depends on dough temperature.
Baking time for separate buns will be around 15 to 20 minutes is our estimation, but again keep an eye on it, it may take a few turns to get it right.
Good luck with it and enjoy the Holiday season!
Esty says
Dear Ed & Marieke,
Thank you for this recipe. I would like to make 20loaves at a go. Do I just scale the recipe up 20times?
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Esty,
Yes, it is as simple as that. Please make sure to double check and write down your calculations, because you do not want to make costly mistakes with these quantities of course.
Happy brioche baking!
Sarah Nicoll says
Novice baker and my first attempt at Brioche, so pleased and proud that it turned out well despite not having a mixer and having to put in a fair amount of elbow grease to mix by hand. Very easy recipe to follow and very very tasty especially hot from the oven slathered in butter. Would definitely reccomend this and will certainly be making again and trying out some of your other recipes. Thank you for such a detailed and informative website 😊
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Sarah,
Thank you again for sharing this with us. If you do try some of our other recipes we would love to hear about your results too.
Lots of loaves,
Ed & Marieke
Chef Jared Muyale says
nice
Chiara says
Hi. I was wondering what are some good combinations to put with this bread before you bake it? Just to jazz it up a bit.
Thankyou! 🙂
Katherine says
I looked through so many recipes and thought I would give this a shot since the ingredients that I have is the closest to what this recipe states. I followed it all religiously except for the method. What I did was I sprinkled the yeast onto the warm milk, left that to stand till yeast was dissolved and added in the sugar. I then went on to weigh my other ingredients out and slowly added in the flour and salt, followed by the eggs one by one and then the butter. I mixed everything with hand as I don’t have a mixer and it was a huge gloopy mess. However I still scrapped everything up and proof the dough in the fridge overnight, but only to find that there wasn’t much rise. I proceed to shape the dough (which was still very very sticky as per the night before) and it’s now proofing for the 2nd time. I intend to only bake it if the dough does double in size and I don’t know how long that is going to take or if it will rise at all as I just discovered the butter I’ve used was salted. So the amount of salt in the dough could be overwhelming the yeast. If my bread fails, I do not blame this recipe at all as I did not follow through thoroughly, but it is very frustrating when so many brioche recipe out there ask to be mix in a mixer. Not everyone has that luxury and I am pretty sure in the olden days no proper patisserie would be using a breadmaker too. Anyhow, we’ll see how it goes 🙂
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Katherine,
We do not think the salt in the butter should be a big problem. It is only when yeast and salt are in direct contact for longer that problems will occur. But if you use instant yeast it does not have to be added to the milk first, in fact it could be the cause of your lack in rise if the milk was too warm (it could damage the yeast). It is very brave of you to mix everything by hand and we understand that is an extra challenge. Our suggestion, if you have not seen it yet, would be to give our no knead brioche recipe a try. You can find it here: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…d-version/
Good luck with it!
Marieke & Ed
muratsari says
I tried 3 times, all of them was perfect… :-))
Weekend Bakers says
Wonderful, thank you for the feedback and enjoy the baking Muratsari!
Dorian says
It is any way to conver this recipe to USA system, like OZ? I try at lest 7 times but I can not get the metric system convertion correctly. PLEASE HELP.
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Dorian,
No worries! One OZ is 28 grams so you divide the ingredients in grams by 28. So the flour is 375 / 28 = 13.40 OZ.
One liquid OZ is 30ml so you divide the ingredients in milliliters by 30. So the milk is 60 / 30 = 2 liquid OZ.
Our baking conversion list might help you too: www.weekendbakery.com/cooki…nversions/
Happy Baking!
Marieke
Raluca says
The new recipe and clip sound amazing!
I will not give up 🙂
Raluca says
Hi,
so it was in the fridge in a bowl. I took it out, left it for 30mins, then shaped it moved it to the pan and removed it from the pan when I took it out from the oven.
I think my flour has around 13% protein..could this be the problem?
Thank you!
Weekend Bakers says
It could explain why it did not rise as much and on the other hand the 4.5 hours proofing could mean it was a bit over-proofed. Maybe your flour also absorbed more moisture. Crumbly texture can also mean it needed a bit more mixing or development.
But do not feel bad…we often make recipes 5 to 10 times before we get the result we want. You are not only using different (brand of) flour but also different other ingredients and have different equipment, hands, surroundings, climate et cetera. Judging from shows like the Great British Bake Off you see every week how a group of people get the same recipe and you get 10 to 12 different versions (and they even have the same equipment and probably ingredients).
So I think, with each recipe you have to make it your own somehow.
Hopefully this week I am going to post my other (no knead) brioche recipe. We also made a short video clip to show how we go about making it. Maybe you will give that a try too.
Raluca says
Hi,
I baked the brioche last night and it didn’t turn up…so not sure what I did wrong :(.
It did not raise as beautifully as yours…it did raise a bit..but left it for about 4h30min…to almost reach the rim of my pan..then it got stuck to the pan when I wanted to remove it (as I was that smart not to dust it with flour…) and it turned up really crumbly..
It is tasty but not fluffy and raised.
Could it be the flour that I used? Or maybe because I left in the fridge for around 15hrs?
Can I ask what is the protein percentage in the flour that you are using?
Thank you!!
Raluca
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Raluca,
What a shame! The fridge is not the problem I think. Can I ask if you if you removed the brioche from the pan before or after baking?
The protein content of the type 55 flour would be around 11%, this is about the same percentage as an all purpose flour would have.
Raluca says
Thank you very much! will give this one a try until then!
have a nice evening!
Raluca
Raluca says
Hi guys,
Just a quick question: how long can I leave the dough in the fridge? I mean: can it stay longer than 12hrs?
Thank you very much!
Raluca
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Raluca,
I know from experience that up to 24 hours will probably be fine. The coming week I will also be posting my no knead brioche recipe. I think and hope you will like that too. Very easy to make!
Greetings,
Marieke
Marieke says
Thank you Sally!,
First time I made this recipe I was so pleasantly surprised at the results. And it’s such a joy to bake it, it gives an instant festive mood!
Marieke
Sally says
I love this recipe! I’m a beginner when it comes to bread baking and I’ve tried several brioche recipes and this turns out to be the keeper!! Thank you!