It's beautiful to see how personal food, and how accessible a small food business can be:
Our friend Sixtine Blandin started to make original Vendée brioche and now she takes orders every week for you to pick up in the morning.
There are plenty of brioche, each region has a special recipe/ slight differences of shape, ingredients, baking process etc...
Brioche Vendéenne is a type of brioche (originated from Vendée, a department of the french west coast) special for its braided shape and its higher cream and milk proportion, aswell as having a hint of orange blossom flower taste to it.
I started making brioches out of nostalgy for these warm toasted slices with melting salted butter on top; I’d be stuffing my face with it every morning in Summer and be contempted.
Add to this the fact my boyfriend’s father has a windmill in Vendée with great flour.
Making them in a bricknic is a great tool for cooking the brioche all way through: the heat and steam together will enable the brioches to be moist and grow evenly.
And then to have it golden brown you need put the brick without its cap, back in the oven and there, you have a fluffy, creamy and shiny brioche with a fantastic smell.
Here’s how to make it, for 2 brick brioche:
Ingredients:
65g tepid milk
40g sugar
1/2 ts salt
4g dry yeast or 1/4 cube of fresh yeast
250g flour
1 eggs
40g butter (at room temperature)
1 tbs crème fraiche
few drops of orange blossom water
1 egg yolk for the shining touch
Instructions:
- Mix together the milk, sugar, yeast.
- Add the flour, the salt, and the egg.
- Knead until it becomes like a dough.
- Add the butter, the crème fraîche and the few drops of orange blossom water.
- Knead once again, until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.
- Let it rest outside for 2 hours and leave it in the fridge overnight. Keeping it in the fridge will help the dough grow slowly and facilitate the shaping into the desired shape. But the overnight waiting can be shortened to 3 hours when stored in ambient environment.
- The next morning, roll out slightly the dough to relieve the gas and separate the dough into 6 long stripes of dough. With this you will make 2 brioches.
- Take 3 stripes and braid them together.
- Put the top part of the brick in water.
- Brush the top of the braided brioche with the egg yolk that’s been mixed with a bit of water and leave it to rest for 30mn.
- While resting, you can put the whole brick in the oven for 15mn, at 200°. At the end of the time the brick should be steaming hot.
- Put the brioche inside the brick, then to the oven for 10mn.
- At the end of the 10mn, uncover the brick, add more egg yolk on the brioche (the more yolk, the shinier they’ll be), and reset for 10 more minutes, at 180°.
- Bam! It’s been 20mn in total, it smell fantastic. You now have to do the hardest part of the process: get your brioche out of the brick and oven and leave it to cool on a grid for at least 20 mn .This waiting time enables the brioche to harden and cook for few more minutes. If you don’t wait your brioche will not keep its shape very well (a bit like it’s been smashed) and be too moist.
- After these terrible 20mn, you can finally go for it and enjoy your homemade brioche vendéenne.
