Brioche feuilletée revisited - chocolate hazelnut braid

I would never have imagined that the most viewed post on this blog would be Brioche feuilletée, written back in November, 2016. I launched that project by tweaking the brioche recipe from a Le Notre Paris class I attended in September of that year. Reducing the butter in the base dough, adding a butter block and putting it through three 3-folds yielded a lovely laminated result.

Since then, as is my wont, I’ve reviewed a number of additional brioche recipes and techniques from the likes of Dorie Greenspan and Jeffrey Hamelman (of King Arthur Flour fame) and developed a new version of the base dough in November, 2018. The dough can be used for any brioche option you wish - Nanterre, brioche à tête, coffee cake, cinnamon buns or brioche rolls topped with pastry cream/jam/fruit. Lots of choices.

In this recipe PDF I go into more details about brioche, adjusting the recipe to yield either a leaner or an even richer dough plus some options for laminating the dough. So many possibilities.

It helps me to assess a brioche recipe by looking at the butter to flour ratio. A medium brioche dough typically contains butter that is about 50% the weight of the flour. Brioche can run from lean (where the butter may be as low as 25% of the flour) or rich where the butter can be all the way up to 100% of the flour.

The full batch of the base brioche dough (before adding any butter block/laminations) yields about 1300 g (2.8 lbs) of dough. So you can make the full batch and then separate out the 600 g for this braided two loaf project. Wrap and freeze the remaining dough for later or use it for other projects you might have up your sleeve.

Using Hamelman’s guidelines for these braided delights, I laminated 600 g of the base dough with an additional 120 g/4.25 ounces of butter which, by my calculations gave the final result a butter to flour ratio of 1:1. Now THAT’S a rich brioche! Remember - this makes TWO braids.

Let’s do a quick review on laminating the dough - it never hurts, since the more you do it, the more it becomes second nature.

Roll the dough out to a 6”x12” rectangle. Have a 6” butter block ready - it should be cool and malleable.

Place the butter on half of the dough . . . . . .

then fold the dough over the butter, pinching the edges closed to fully envelope the dough. This is the beurrage.

If your kitchen is pretty warm or your dough and butter seem warm and starting to squish, wrap it up and refrigerate for 30 minutes before proceeding. Now roll the dough out to about 18” long and 6” wide, always with the short side parallel to the work surface and rolling to and from yourself (not sideways) to achieve the length. Do a 4-fold (book fold) by bringing each short end into the middle with edges meeting . . . . . .

then fold it on itself.

Wrap and chill the dough for 30 minutes to allow it to relax then proceed with a 3-fold (business letter fold). Before rolling remember to turn the dough 90 degrees so the “spine” or fold is on your left then roll out to approximately 18”x6” again, rolling to/from yourself. Don’t get hung up on exact measurements - you’re going for about three times length to width.

Visualizing the dough in thirds, fold one end up . . . . . .

and the other down over it. Congrats! Your laminated dough is complete.

Now wrap it snugly and refrigerate for a good 1-2 hours to let it relax and firm up before rolling it out for your intended purpose.

For this braid project I divided the dough in half - look at those buttery layers!

Each half of the laminated version weighs about 360 g (before filling) and is good for a medium loaf pan size braid.

I created a chocolate hazelnut filling by taking 200 g of a hazelnut remonce mixture I had left from this hazelnut/almond couronne project and adding 50 g / ~2 ounces of Nocciola crema and a bit of egg white and simple syrup to loosen it a bit for piping.

Butter two medium (8”x4”) loaf pans and have the filling ready in a piping bag.

On a lightly floured surface roll one half of the dough into a 10”x10” square and divide it in three strips.

Egg wash (I used egg white since I had some on hand) along one long edge of each strip then pipe a line of filling along the opposite edge.

Roll each strip up into a log and press the edge to seal.

With seam sides down do a classic three strand braid.

As you come to the end of the braid, just tuck the ends under then pop it into a buttered loaf pan.

Repeat the steps with the second half of the dough.

Cover the pans with buttered plastic wrap and let rise for a good 1.5 hours. Toward the end of that proofing time heat the oven to 375ºF.

Brush the loaves with egg wash and bake about 35 minutes until nicely golden.

Remove them from the pans and, if you’d like to gussy them up a bit, brush with either some simple syrup or apricot glaze for a bit of shine and even go another step and drizzle on a confectioner’s sugar/milk/vanilla glaze. I left mine au naturel.

Once cooled, I sliced into one of these babies. Oooooh - buttery with just the right swirl of choco-hazelnut and pretty darn delicious to boot. Nothing like a good brioche, eh?

I love the feel of dough, the shaping, the proofing, the baking, the aromas and, of course, the tasting! Dough reigns!!