A few weeks ago, I was asked to try out a recipe from RicardoCuisine.com – I could pick any recipe I wanted, but it had to come from the Dessert Recipes section (obviously, they know I love making desserts more than anything else!). I had a really tough time narrowing down my choice, since there are some really great recipes on the site (I’ve bookmarked several others to try in the future), but I settled on trying my hand at the Brioche Buns.
There were two reasons I chose Brioche Buns:
1. I had never baked bread before and figured this would be a good challenge for me
2. The recipe looked simple enough that I could tackle it in the short time span I had to work with
After three batches of brioche buns, I finally managed to bake up something pretty sweet!
BATCH 1:
Approach: Admission time: I have never worked with yeast before, but I have watched Paul work with it dozens of times for his pizza dough and focaccia bread, so I was pretty confident that it was a simple process. The only problem was that our little jar of yeast was labelled “Active Dry Yeast” and the recipe called for “Instant Yeast”. So I went on the internet and found the substitution amount and went to work. I also opted to leave the chocolate chips out because A) I wanted the bread to be regular bread and not a sweet one and B) I didn’t have any chips handy and was too lazy to go to the store.
Oops: While I was waiting for the dough to ‘rise’, I started cleaning up. Um… why is there all this sugar leftover in the bowl that was holding the milk and sugar mixture? Crud. Apparently, the milk all poured into the batter, leaving the sugar behind. 🙁
Result: The buns were ok, but a little dense and I obviously wasn’t happy with all the sugar that was omitted.
BATCH 2:
Approach: I made sure ALL the sugar went into the mix, but everything else remained the same as with the first batch – again, I used Active Dry Yeast and left out the chocolate chips.
Oops: The ‘Oops’ moment didn’t happen until we were eating the second batch of buns, when Paul mentioned that he had run out of Active Dry Yeast and THINKS he filled the jar with Instant Dry Yeast instead. Wait. So did I just spend 10 minutes ‘proofing’ yeast that doesn’t need to be proofed and added 1/4 cup of extra water to my batter?
Result: The Batch 2 buns were definitely sweeter than Batch 1, but still a little more dense than I would like. Also, my kitchen smells amazing right now.
BATCH 3:
Approach: Time to stop being lazy. I went to the store and bought a few packets of Instant Yeast AND I picked up a bag of milk chocolate chips. I’m determined to get this right.
Oops: No oops. None.
Result: The buns were a success! They were much lighter than the last two batches, plus the chocolate chips really added a nice level of sweetness to the brioche. My family loved them. Paul thinks they should have more chocolate chips – he and my sister, Suzy, are convinced that the buns should be half chocolate. So, that might be an idea for the future Batch 4.
THE END RESULT
Considering I had never attempted baking bread or buns before, this was such a fun experience. The recipe was simple and easy-to-follow and the results were pretty great. After discovering how quick baking my own bread is, I definitely won’t be hesitating to try again very soon!
Considering this was the first recipe I tried from RicardoCuisine.com, I was pretty impressed. The recipe was easy-to-follow, easy-to-make and came out great (forgiving my own Oops moments). Take a look through their site and let me know – what would be the first thing you would make?
