Brioche Bread

My family loves this sweet bread. We usually buy it from a local supermarket near our house. The children love this bread. It is soft and sweet. Different than the normal bread used for sandwich lunch that the children usually bring to school.

A week ago, at request of husband, I tried a recipe I found in the internet. The recipe stated that the dough would be very soft and sticky because of the amount of the butter. However, this lead me to a very big mistake. I have already suspected something was not quite correct with the steps, since based on my previous experience with bread, I need to knead the bread until the gluten develops well.

My brioche bread tasted a bit floury, despites the 24 hours proofing time. It was very disappointing. The comment of my oldest child made me almost cry. "Mummy, this tastes bah". Oh dear.

That is why, 2 days after that, I found myself baked this bread again. This time, I adjust the steps and the amount of some ingredients according to my previous experiences with some bread recipes. 
The result is a very soft brioche bread, the softness feels like cotton in the mouth. BUT it is still not as sweet as our usual store-bought brioche. 

After I search the content of the ingredients of our store-bought brioche, I realized that their brioche contents at least twice as mush sugar as  mine. 

So, despite my second effort producing the cotton soft brioche, my oldest child still says, "Mummy this one is also not delicious".

Anyway, my youngest loves it, and my husband finished a big chunk of bread, eaten with a Cookie Notti spread, cappucino flavour. The bread also reminds me to my grandfather's fave, Roti Bluder. The texture is similar and also the taste. 

If your children love sweet, you may want to double the sugar in the recipe below. The time needed to make this is quite long, but it fits well with my schedule, since I bake only at night. Please feel free to comment, especially about the sugar content. I am curious on how much sugar is sweet enough, especially for the children sweet tooth.

Ingredients
500 grams white bread flour (high gluten flour)
7 grams instant yeast (my local brand yeast, suggests 7 grams for every 500 gr flour)
1 tsp salt
6 eggs (or 5 if you use bigger size eggs)
70 grams sugar
125 ml milk
250 grams butter (soft, room temperature)
1 egg, beaten for egg wash

Method
1. Place the flour in the bowl, sugar at one side of bowl, salt at one side of bowl and the instant yeast in the middle. Mix the dry ingredients well, you can immediately use the knead (hook) extension of your mixer.
2. After the dry ingredients well mixed, add the eggs and mix it well.
3. Add the milk and mix again the dough until the milk is good incorporated.
4. Cut the butter in cubes, and add them one by one into the bowl. Knead the dough until the gluten develops well. This is when the dough does not stick anymore to the side of the bowl. It is, however, a bit greasy compared to the dough of normal sandwich loaf, due to the high content of butter and eggs.You should be able to stretch the dough easily, although it will not form a relatively thinner membrane like the dough of sweet bread with water roux method. But it should be similar to that.
5. Remove the dough to a plastic bowl and cover it with cling film (plastic wrap). Store it in the refrigerator overnight, or around 24 hours to let it proof. By then, the volume of the dough should be at least twice.
6. After the dough rise double in size, punch down the dough and divide into several pieces, around 50-60 grams each. Place each portion parallel to each other in the loaf pan (remember to brush the pan with margarine/butter before filling the pan with the dough. I use two loaf pans, but you may also use 3 loaf pans.
7. Let the dough to raise again for around 2-3 hours, outside the refrigerator, at room temperature. Brush the top of the bread with the beaten egg.
8. Heat the oven, 180Celcius. I use lower heat. Bake the bread for around 30 minute or until the skewer inserted into the bread comes clean. I change to both lower and upper heat in the last 7 minutes to get a nice golden brown colour.  Let the bread cool on the rack before serving it.

Since I usually bake more than what we can finish in one sitting, I freeze half of the bread. We have tried the frozen bread. We took out the frozen bread and leave it at room temperature for a couple of hours. The bread is still soft and the texture is still good. It is delicious and the texture is still heavenly. I really wish that my children prefer less sweet food, one day.