Before I proceed further, I will place the link from which I got the recipe:

http://www.pickycook.com/bread/lemonbriocherolls.aspx, which came from the below link:

http://www.thekneadforbread.com/2008/03/08/lemon-brioche-croissants/.

Directions:

1 cup whole milk, lukewarm

1/4 cup sugar

4 eggs ( room temp )

(420-450g) 3 1/2 – 3 3/4 cups bread flour

1 tablespoon instant yeast

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups soft butter

1 1/4 cup lemon curd or pie filling

3 tablespoon powdered sugar

1. Combine all dry ingredients (besides sugar) in a bowl, set aside.

2. In another bowl, dissolve sugar into milk and then add eggs. Mix well.

3. Add the dry mix to the wet ingredients slowly and mix. The dough should be rather sticky; turn it out onto a floured surface and knead for three minutes. Knead butter into the dough a half stick at a time until all butter is incorporated. This dough should be rather sticky.

4. Place in greased bowl, cover, stick in fridge, wait 4 hours or overnight. I prefer to make this late at night and let it sit til morning.

5. The next morning, flour a counter (do it well or else). Divide dough into 2 pieces and cover one back up. Roll the other piece into a 15 inch circle (I can neither roll in a circle nor do I know exactly what 15 inches is without a ruler…so I just relied on sight and did the best I could ). Cut the circle into 8 roughly equal slices with a pizza cutter and place about a tablespoon’s worth of lemon curd on the base of each triangle. I recommend going to one of the links posted above to get an idea of how this looks. Starting from the triangle’s base, roll it upwards towards the tip of the triangle and pinch the edges to seal in the curd filling. Place on greased baking sheet and be sure to leave plenty of room; these things like to spread out a bit in the oven. Cover and let sit for 45-60 minutes and brush with egg wash ( before baking. Repeat above steps with other half of dough; this recipe makes about 16 brioche rolls. These things bake at 350º for about 15-17 minutes, center rack.

My Notes/Commentary:

The brioche in the pictures rose much better than mine; I wonder if it’s because my dough was cold from being in the fridge, I didn’t add enough yeast, or the way I shaped them was counterproductive to any rising that would have taken place. I didn’t flour the counter nearly well enough and I had trouble getting my dough to unstick after it had been rolled out. The dough itself isn’t bad, very rich (though I was a tad scared when I looked and saw that I was putting in 3 sticks of butter), and the homemade lemon curd was awesome. I tried to bake both pans of 8 at once and placed a pan on each rack as close to the middle as possible; I should have moved the top rack to the bottom and vice versa half way through the baking time. I ended up with brioche that stuck to the bottom of the pan but had a browning top on the top rack, and toasted bottoms but pale tops with the bottom rack.

How to make lemon curd: http://www.pickycook.com/dessert/lemoncurddesserts.aspx

Make your own lemon curd for these rolls; store-bought is no good.

zest of 4 lemons (removed with a vegetable peeler, chopped finely)
1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 stick unsalted butter (room temp) (I thought a whole stick made it taste a bit too buttery)
4 large eggs
1/8 tsp salt

Combine the sugar and finely chopped zest. Cream the butter and sugar mixture, add eggs one at a time and beat well. Add salt and lemon juice and blend well; if it looks curdled it’s ok. Prepare a double boiler (or just do it directly over heat if one is unavailable) and gently heat until it thickens (about 170º). Do not heat too quickly or you may end up with pieces of cooked egg in your curd. Place into a container and cover immediately to prevent skin from forming. Refrigerate for up to a week.

I wanted to see how much dough my stand mixer could handle, so I decided to whip up some challah dough….6 pounds of it. The mixer got it halfway there, but I wasn’t totally satisfied so I pulled it out of the bowl and worked it by hand for a couple minutes. This recipe makes a LOT of dough (5-6 loaves).

The recipe was pulled off the following site: http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=1261#more-1261. I made some slight modifications, as follows:

600g. (5 cups) whole wheat flour

400-500g. (4-5) cups unbleached all-purpose flour

30g (1/4 cup) wheat germ (if there’s none on hand, use flour in its place)

1.5 tablespoons instant yeast (2 packets)

1 tablespoon kosher salt (I used a heaping teaspoon of table salt. if you use table salt, don’t use a tablespoon)

1/4 cup vital wheat gluten (important when working with whole wheat breads)

2 cups dried sweetened cranberries (I used a cup and found them to be rather scarce in the finished product. I substituted raisins since we had no cranberries. I recommend soaking dried fruit in orange juice before use)

Zest from 2-3 oranges (I used one orange and didn’t get any of the orange taste I wanted)

709ml (3 cups) lukewarm water

1/4 cup melted butter (1 stick)

170g (1/2 cup) honey

3 large eggs

Egg wash (1 egg lightly blended with half-eggshell of water)

Instructions:

1. combine dry ingredients (including zest and cranberries/raisins) in large bowl.

2. in another bowl, mix honey and water. add the 3 eggs and beat well, and then add the melted butter.

3. slowly pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients. when I made it with the original recipe, I had something that resembled a pancake batter, so I kept adding flour until it reached a workable consistency. start with the low end of the AP flour, and add some more in as needed. you may need much more flour than listed (I certainly needed more than the 3 cups of AP flour originally listed in the above link).

4. dump it out onto the counter and knead for 7-9 minutes. The dough should bounce back when you poke it and if pulled, will want to bounce back. It should be satiny, not too sticky, but not powder dry. I’m probably not the best person to ask about how to tell when dough is properly kneaded; if you want to know more there’s plenty out there on the internet. look up the ‘windowpane test’ as well.

5. divide dough into 5-6 pieces, wrap each piece that is to be stored tightly in plastic wrap, and freeze or store in fridge. The dough will be good for about 5 days in the fridge.

to work a piece: (if refrigerated, times may be longer. if frozen, let thaw first) place the piece in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and wait 2 hours. deflate it, and cut it into three or six pieces (depending on how you want to braid it). The next portion can be far better explained by going to the following links than having me trying to talk through it.

http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=360

http://www.finecooking.com/videos/bra

iding-challah.aspx

After shaping, let sit for 20 minutes, brush with the egg wash, and bake for 25-35 minutes at 350º until you get a lovely color contrast like so:

My thoughts/comments:

I had a hard time working with this until I got enough flour into it to turn it from pancake batter to bread dough. I liked working the large amount of dough; I haven’t worked anything more than a two loaf batch up to now. Zesting the oranges would have been easier if I had the proper tool to do it with, but at least I know what not to do it with now. My box grater does not make good zest; I didn’t realize it until I was zesting lemons last night for lemon curd (read about it in the next post) and tried a vegetable peeler. The zest from that vegetable peeler was so much better than the stuff I cut from the box grater. I took some dough out of the fridge last night, unwrapped it, put it in a bowl, and covered; by morning it had risen and was ready for shaping. The original recipe did not have enough orange zest nor dried fruit; I will double both the next time I make this. I might also increase honey to 200g, and grind some sea salt instead of using table salt. I completely forgot about adding the wheat germ, but it still turned out good. Braiding the dough is rather fun (and really easy once you get the steps).

We drove an hour and a half (bad traffic) to buy me a stand mixer as an early birthday present. I love it. Now I have to figure out how to get rid of the massive batches of goodies I crank out cause it’s kinda pointless to pull out a stand mixer to make a dozen cookies.

My sister bought some farm animal shaped cookie cutters yesterday, so I made a batch of sugar cookie dough. Never done sugar cookies before. I pulled a recipe off the food network site (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/sugar-cookies-recipe/index.html).

In summary:

360 grams (3 cups) AP flour

2 sticks butter (softened)

1 cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 tablespoon milk

1/4 tsp. salt

3/4 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla

Instructions:

1. cream butter and sugar, add in egg and milk.

2. combine dry ingredients in separate bowl, then gradually add into the wet ingredients. mix well.

3. chill in the fridge for half an hour. I left mine in there overnight and they were too hard to work.

4. roll out to quarter inch thickness and cut out with what you please. if it sticks, use some powdered sugar when rolling.

These cookies are baked at 375º for 7-9 minutes, or until they start to brown on the edges. I had to bake a little longer myself.

Notes: I will definitely double or triple the dough next time; this stuff should freeze well. I’ll add in a splash of vanilla next time. It’s a good sugar cookie, not terribly sweet, rather nice.

Update: I have now had one tester and suggestions I’d like to add are: The dough may be hard to work with after being chilled; I believe the point of the chilling is to help it maintain its cut form when placed in the oven, so one could chill the cookies on the sheet after they are cut (though personally I don’t have that kind of room in my fridge so I’ll be doing it the other way). When doubling the recipe, I would perhaps add slightly less baking soda to avoid over-rising.