When you can't go to Paris, make Brioche at home.

I didn't participate in the last bread braid.  I was a little busy getting ready to go to Paris with my husband to meet my daughter and travel through France and Germany.  UNTIL A VOLCANO WITH A NAME THAT I CAN NEITHER SPELL NOR PRONOUNCE DECIDED TO ERUPT.  OK, got that off my chest.   Thank you for listening to my little rant.  I feel much better.  It seems that no one was too excited about the last recipe anyway, so maybe it is not all that bad that I didn't get to make it. 

So, since I can't be in Paris, I thought I would make some Parisien Bread, sort of.

These are my mini brioche molds.
 I've never used them for brioche.  In fact, when I bought them many years ago I had no idea what they really were. I was hosting a wedding luncheon for a friend and I thought they would make great individual Jell-O molds for rainbow layered Jell-O.  They did and were my guests impressed with that layered Jell-O.  It was"the thing" (Geez... have I come a long way in my cooking and baking skills).  It was many years later that I discovered what these pans were really used for.  Haven't made Jell-O since and I haven't used the molds either. Until today.

I greased them with ...well, grease.  Baking grease that is.  I have used something similar before but this time I used a recipe from Michelle (Big Black Dogs blog) which she shared with our HBinFive group. 

You whip together equal parts shortening, canola oil, and flour.  Just brush on your pans or molds in this case and it takes the place of Baker's Joy spray and it's much less expensive to make.  I like the control I have with brushing it into the molds over spraying.   That's the concoction in the yellow storage container on the left.
The breads released from the molds like a charm.  You need to use this if you bake a lot.

To shape your mini-brioches, take about 50 grams of dough (I weighed mine) and shape into a ball.  Put the side of your well-floured hand into the roll about 2/3rds of the way up.  Press down and roll back and forth until the "head" of the dough separates almost all the way through.

Now set the larger part of the dough into the mold, head side up.  Gently press the body of the dough into the sides of the mold with your thumb while allowing the "head" to drop into the middle.  I got better at this as I went along. 

I brushed these with egg wash with a little leftover cream and sprinkled a mixture of decorating sugar and cinnamon over them before baking.  I baked my breads at  350 degrees F. for 25 minutes.  They were perfectly baked.

Pretty cute.  I think I will have to use these molds more often.  I'm so glad I didn't get rid of them 20 years ago.

This is my favorite recipe from HBinFive so far; nothing fancy, and not really even brioche.  But so simple and good.  This has great crumb and flavor and there are endless possibilites of things to make with this dough. 

I'm off to my social knitting to share my rolls.