IN THE KITCHEN : Brioche in the Machine Age

I’m normally not a great fan of the multitude of convenience-oriented machinery you can buy for your kitchen. This is an informed opinion, believe me. I have tried them all. And I have the full cabinets to prove it.

My dislike is partly because one of the most pleasurable parts of cooking is the process, and the assorted gadgets only distance you from that. And it’s partly out of a different definition of convenience--it makes no sense to spend 15 minutes assembling, disassembling and cleaning the machine parts necessary to slice five minutes’ worth of bell peppers.

But for pastry and bread making, I’m a firm believer in machinery. Some may recoil in horror. How can you get the same delicate touch out of a food processor that you can by hand?

Maybe you can’t. But one of my first cooking jobs entailed making brioche at a small restaurant. First, my boss said, I had to make it by hand to get the feel. There is nothing like beating butter into a big work bowl full of bread dough and then slapping that sticky, slippery stuff around on a table for 10 minutes or so to make you think twice about the spiritual purity of handmade pastries.

When I graduated to a machine, it was a huge Hobart mixer that came up to my waist and had a work bowl as big as an industrial sink and as heavy as lead. Wrestle that around for a while and you’re ready to give up pastry making for good.

And so, when I got my first decent food processor, it was with some skepticism that I tried a recipe for brioche adapted for the machine by James Beard. “Yeah, right,” I thought. “This will be either the worst pastry in the world or take some incredibly intricate technique that will turn out to be another huge waste of time.”

I put the flour in the work bowl, cut in the butter and added the yeast mixture and a couple of eggs. Not more than two minutes later, there was the brioche dough. Another two minutes of hand kneading and I had the prettiest, silkiest dough you’ve ever felt.

This was clearly too good to be true.

And in a way, it was. When I employed this technique with the typical amount of butter used in a brioche, the bread was fairly heavy--I honestly don’t know whether you really can get the delicate texture and buttery richness of a real pate a brioche fine in the food processor. For that you need the more delicate handling that power mixers--or your hands--provide.

But this food processor recipe is fantastic for the multitude of little pastry bites you can build on the more plebeian pain brioche commun , which is made with half the amount of butter.

Actually, I find that this dough falls somewhere between the two--less delicate than the real stuff but still finer than the normal brioche bread. That’s because of a neat little trick Beard used. In real brioche, the liquid ingredients are added to the flour first, forming the tough gluten strands that then capture and hold the butter in place.

But in this version, Beard uses the food processor to thoroughly cut the butter into the flour before adding the liquid ingredients. When you do this, the fat interrupts the formation of much of the gluten structure, giving you a softer, more delicate bread.

What’s even better, it’s practically foolproof. This dough couldn’t be easier to put together, and it can be made the night before and left to rise slowly in a plastic food bag in the refrigerator. Pull it out the next morning, let it warm briefly, then roll it out and bake it. You can have freshly made cinnamon brioches on the breakfast table in just over a half-hour.

And if that isn’t enough to erase any lingering prejudices against machinery, I don’t know what is.

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This recipe, adapted from the brioche loaf in James Beard’s “New Recipes for the Cuisinart” (Cuisinarts: 1976), can be varied in many ways. Sprinkle raisins over the cinnamon sugar, for example. Or sprinkle the rolled - out dough with chocolate chips, fold it in the same way and you’ll end up with a nice pain au chocolat. Or spread the dough with any kind of fruit jam. . . . You get the picture.

CINNAMON BRIOCHE

1 package dry yeast

1 tablespoon sugar

1/4 cup warm milk (95 to 105 degrees)

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup frozen butter, cut into pieces

2 eggs

2 tablespoons melted butter

2 tablespoons sugar mixed with 2 teaspoons cinnamon

Combine yeast, sugar and milk in small bowl. Set aside to proof.

In food processor combine flour, salt and butter and pulse to cut in butter finely. Add yeast mixture and pulse again, then add eggs and process until dough gathers in ball that comes cleanly away from sides of work bowl and rides around on top of blade. Process 1 minute. Then remove ball to lightly floured board and knead 1 to 2 minutes until smooth.

Form dough in smooth ball and place in lightly oiled bowl, turning to coat all sides of ball. Cover loosely with plastic wrap. Set aside in warm place to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Alternatively, place kneaded dough ball in tightly sealed plastic food bag and refrigerate overnight. Dough will rise slowly in plastic food bag and just need to be brought to room temperature before rolling out.

When risen, punch dough down and flatten into rectangle. On lightly floured board, roll out to 1/2-inch thick. If dough is square, cut in half. Brush top surface with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Fold long side of dough rectangle 2/3 of way across dough. Fold remaining 1/3 of dough over as in letter. Brush top with butter and sprinkle again with cinnamon sugar. Cut into 2-inch-wide sections, transfer to ungreased baking sheet. Let rise again until puffy, 15 to 20 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees 20 to 30 minutes, until light-brown. Makes 18 to 20 cinnamon brioches.

Each of 18 brioches contains about:

122 calories; 205 mg sodium; 41 mg cholesterol; 7 grams fat; 12 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams protein; 0.04 gram fiber.