Light Wheat Brioche

This is a healthy improvement on a rich a delicious brioche:

I used a mix of whole wheat and regular flour in both the sponge:

And the resulting dough, pictures just before the butter was worked in:

It takes a bit of kneading to get the butter absorbed and distributed:

Once the butter was in and the dough fully kneaded, I set it to rise:

A few hours later, I took this dough and set it for a second rise in the loaf pans:

Yum.

Casatiello

Casatiello is an Italian Brioche - in other words, rich dough enriched further with meat and cheese:

This bread begins with a sponge composed primarily of warm milk, flour and yeast. When it is mixed it has the consistency of pancake batter, though it significantly thickens after standing:

The sponge is mixed with more flour, water and salt, but no more yeast. All of the yeast in this recipe is contained in the sponge. Once this is fully mixed, soft butter is incorporated into the dough:

Once the dough is almost fully kneaded, the meat and then the cheese is folded in:

Here is the dough after a first rise, in a cake pan, the closest to a traditional pan I own (sometimes this bread is baked in coffee cans!):

I pulled the towel off of the dough mid-rise for a progress check:

And here is the dough ready to bake:

Still warm, a slice of this bread is a sandwich fresh from the oven!

Brioche Loaves

I am not one to turn down sweet, delicious pastry. Having it in the form of a sandwich is even better:
A friend had turned me on to brioche as a sandwich bread when he brought it to me from a wonderful bakery in Prospect Heights about a year ago. Making something like it on my own has been on my mind since I started baking bread again.

The trick to brioche? Butter. It is the last thing mixed in before you knead your bread and set it to rise:
For a really rich pastry instead of sandwich and toasting bread, about four times the above amount of butter would be used.

You can see the dough after kneading below. I had to use more flour than usual because the butter made this dough so soft, but once the consistency was right it didn't stick to the counter at all:

The loaves are coated with an egg wash for a shiny finish before a final rise:

And let the toasting begin!