I'm on Day 2 making Nancy Silverton's Raisin Brioche from BREADS FROM
THE LA BREA BAKERY. Can someone explain why her mixing procedure is
so complicated? You mix the sponge, half the eggs, flour and sugar
for 2 minutes on medium speed; then you add the salt and mix 2
minutes; then the rest of the eggs until they're incorporated; then
you add 9 oz of butter a bit at a time into what already feels like
dough that's ready to raise. It takes forever to get the butter in
and then you beat the heck out of it some more!
My usual procedure is to mix some of the flour with all the liquid
ingredients, shortening, salt and sugar and then mix in the rest of
the flour. Everything's well incorporated with my method.
Silverton's method might make sense to me if it were a muffin recipe
and things were to be barely mixed, but after you get all the
ingredients into the bowl with this brioche, you beat the heck out of
it anyway!
If we like the recipe, I'll make it again sometime using my method
unless someone can give me a really, really good reason for doing it
her way. It will have to taste pretty spectacular for me to spend a
half-hour just mixing ingredients again!
She also says to grease the pans with butter .... my experience has
been that butter burns and the bread sticks. And she also wants me
to heat the oven at 500 F for an hour before putting the bread
in! If my thermometer says it's at 500 F after 15 minutes, why
should I waste electricity for 45 minutes! If you didn't already
guess ... some teachers and bosses have been irritated with me for
saying "Why do it this way when there's a better and easier way to
get the same result?" Unless, of course, you have a good reason and
can convince me ..... I'll always bow to logic.
Lobo