Brioche~!

I'm making brioche! For the first time! And hoping it'll be okay because for my first bread, brioche is probably one of worst choices I have chosen... Still, I will not be intimidated! I think I might have made a mistake with the dough (I didn't soften my butter enough so it didn't incorporate as quickly as it probably should have and I might not have worked the dough enough...)but it's currently rising so at least I didn't kill the yeast... Which I think I might have done when I made cinnamon rolls (with an orange glaze -- I forgot to photograph them though... T_T).

Still, I'm hoping that despite my missteps, I will have a nice and workable dough to make Pecan Honey Sticky Buns tomorrow. Hopefully. And if that works, I will have another batch of dough ready for something else... If not, well, that's two batches of brioche that I ended up screwing up and that would be bad...

*crosses fingers* Hopefully tomorrow when I wake up, I will not have an oily, sticky, way too soft dough to work with and something that is easily shaped. Hopefully. And then I maybe I'll have the awesomeness of sticky buns! With a brioche dough! Considering the huge amounts of butter I put in them, if they turn out okay, they'll pretty much be heart-attack-in-a-bun. But damn, what a way to go.

Honey Pecan Sticky Buns

So yesterday I talked about making golden brioche for honey pecan sticky buns. After that, I went to sleep and proceeded to have dream after dream about making my honey pecan sticky buns and absolutely failing at it. Like it didn't rise or there wasn't enough glaze or that I burned them. It was a pretty nightmarish night. So I woke up today, both determined and also pretty freaked out that something was going to go wrong...

Thankfully, nothing happened. The dough had firmed up a lot after being chilled overnight so it was pretty easy to work with. I didn't have a flat surface big enough so I didn't roll out the dough as thin as it should have been which meant I didn't get as many rolls as I had wanted to get out of it. After that, I placed the pans in the garage to rise since it was literally the only warm place in the house. It got up to the 90s today so the A/C was one pretty much the whole day and kept the house pretty cool so I was forced to leave my buns in the garage. But hey, it worked. In two hours, it doubled to twice its size which is just how I wanted it.

I baked my buns for half and hour and they turned out wonderfully!

They were a bit too sweet but the bread and the pecans helped offset the sweetness of the glaze. I was shocked at the strong honey taste since I only used a fourth of a cup of honey but it came out very well. And oh my god, brioche just might be my favorite bread. The bottoms -- which really were the tops before I up-ended the buns -- were just a bit crispy and it gave off this almost pastry like texture. It was not quite flaky but close. Whomever said the brioche is like a cross between a bread and a pastry was absolutely right!

I ended up eating two of them myself and my brother also had two. My sister only had a very small one and she's decided she dislikes it and will probably not be having more. And my brother dislikes pecans so he's probably not going to be eating any more either. My parents almost never eat the stuff I make and my grandmother probably wouldn't eat any either so I guess it's up to me to polish them all off... *sigh* It almost ends up like this -- I eat all of what I make because for some reason, even when I'm successful at what I make, people still end up deciding not to eat them anyway. It's quite disheartening... I wonder why they try to cut me down like that? It's happened so often that it almost feels personal... :\ Oh, well, I can't let them keep me down! I will continue making stuff, even if I have to eat it all myself! It's all yummy so I don't mind too much...

Besides, I still have another batch of brioche dough left in the fridge! I think I might either freeze it or use it immediately to make just brioche bread. You know the ones, those little rolls that look like matryoshka dolls. Alas, I don't have fluted brioche tins to make them totally accurate but hey, I have a muffin pan and that'll probably work. But I am tempted to also make a brioche loaf. That would probably have much more uses after it has been baked...