Buttery brioche is the best thing for breakfast. Just make sure you have the right tin for your dough.
What tin for a brioche?
The classic brioche has a sophisticated shape: fluted but open, wider than kugelhopf without the chimney in the centre, like bundt. It’s French – what would you expect?
I didn’t have the appropriate tin when I set out to bake my first brioche so I looked brioche tins up and ordered one. It was touch and go as my dough was already made and resting in the fridge when the courier turned up with a package for me. A VERY SMALL package.
I won’t go into detail but the bottom line is: I have no understanding of dimensions. No feel for how large or small things might be. No idea how much 5 inch is (hehe). I'd ordered what I’d thought was a full sized tin, happily oblivious to the clearly specified dimensions on the merchant’s website: 45(H) x 120(Ø) mm.
A hundred and twenty millimetres, twelve centimetres, five inch. That in a cake tin is, you know, tiny. The thing cost about a fiver too but that didn’t give me any hints – I thought I got a good deal.
I sure used it – as well as several other mini-cups/savarins/whatever I had in the cupboard. The brioche turned out delicious and it actually was a good job to have the individual buns rather than one king-size as I froze them and defrosted for breakfasts over several occasions. But still. An idiot. And to think I have A level Maths.
Brioche in a bun tin
I have subsequently bought a normal size tin but I like the convenience of having several small brioches and so the recipe goes: six mini buns.
If you’d like to make a mega-one, use a 22cm mould. Twenty-two. Dinner plate sized. The diameter of a watermelon. As large as a hat.
The images show both the mini brioches with impressive muffin tops, baked in a six-bun silicone mould, as well as one large fluted-tin brioche. As lovely as each other – which makes sense since it was the same dough…
A note to the recipe: brioche dough is so rich when freshly kneaded it’s almost liquid. That’s why it needs to chill for an hour to be manageable.