Pumpkin Brioche ~ the butcher, the baker

What comes to mind for you when you think of cooking in autumn? For me it's pumpkin, and luckily I was tasked with making some pumpkin brioche at the restaurant to use up some extra pumpkin puree. The recipe I came up with follows.

I'm not the best photographer, but the crumb has a very attractive orange hue

Pumpkin Brioche
Yields: 1 Sandwich Loaf

Time to complete: Day 1, 1 hour. Day 2, 15 minutes. Day 3, 4 hours. Can be squeezed into one day in a real pinch.

Click here to get your own copy of this recipe in a spreadsheet in Google Docs(File- Make A Copy to get your own). Also take a look at the guide to using the spreadsheet, which will allow you to print a recipe for any weight of dough or flour in any unit of weight/mass that you enter.

Ingredients

Preferment:

None

Soaker:

None

Final Dough:
406g Bread Flour

      200g Pumpkin Puree, Strained
      48g Sugar
      12g Yeast
      8g Salt
      92g Eggs
      24g Pumpkin Water (or just water if using canned puree)
      124g Butter
      10g Truffle Oil (optional)

Procedure:

The first day can be skipped if you use canned pumpkin puree. However if you will make your own pumpkin puree, and you should, then the first day is as easy as roasting or steaming the pumpkin and pureeing the flesh. Place the pureed pumpkin in a coffee filter or clean napkin suspended in a container to catch the water that comes out. Allow to cool and strain overnight.
Next, add all the ingredients into a mixing bowl(including the truffle oil if you have and want to use it) and mix on medium speed for 6 minutes. As much butter as is in this dough, it will rather resemble soup by the time it is done.
It will be much easier to shape by tomorrow if it goes right into the fridge now to do its bulk fermentation overnight in the cold, but it would be possible to continue by fermenting for 1-1/2hrs at room temperature if you're in a hurry.
Now to shape the bread, which will be much less sticky if you go the overnight-in-the-fridge route. Using flour on your hands and bench where necessary, gently flatten the dough into something resembling a rectangle and roll it firmly into a log as long as the greased bread pan.
Put it into the pan and let rise, covered, either for about an hour if it fermented at room temperature or as much as three if it just came out of the fridge. The actual times vary based on the temperatures in the fridge and room, but either way it is ready to bake once the bread crests over the top of the pan.
Bake the loaf at 350F for about 30 minutes or until it has that hollow sound when thwacked on the bottom or its internal temperature reaches at least 180F. Let cool.

What to Do With This Bread

With the truffle oil, the bread would serve particularly well in some savory presentation, as my comrade Jon at the restaurant demonstrates:

local poached egg, pumpkin brioche, chanterelle, truffle

With or without the truffle, it is a fantastic bread for french toast if cut about 3/4-in thick and dipped into a rich batter.

the butcher, the baker

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Pumpkin Brioche

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