This flaky honey brioche bread is amazing. And delicious. Simple as that. I had no words when I tried it for the first time. The buttery flavor, and texture of the bread was just AMAZING!
I also want to mention that this recipe is from one of my favorite food bloggers, Half Baked Harvest! https://www.halfbakedharvest.com. Make sure to check her page out, and all of her amazing recipes!!
Like I said, it tastes like a croissant in bread form. And the crust! oh my god, that crust was flaky and just perfection.
I’m not gonna lie, this recipe intimidated me when I read the instructions. There were a lot of steps!…and measuring. Measuring is not my strong point. But I decided to give the recipe a whirl, because it looked SO GOOD!
I started off by taking out my stand mixer, and mixing together the warm milk, yeast, honey, 4 eggs, flour and salt. Using the dough hook attachment, I mixed everything together until a smooth, tacky dough formed. This took about 5 minutes.
Then, I added 4 tablespoons of soft butter, mixed the butter into the dough for another 5 minutes, making sure it was well combined into the dough.
Next step is to cover the dough with plastic wrap, and let it sit for an hour to rise.
The dough doubled in size, and it looked beautiful! I never thought bread dough could look so perfect!
This next step was fun. You get to punch the bread down, to get the air out. I took my hand and floured my knuckles a bit so the dough wouldn’t stick.
After I punched the dough down a bit, I floured a work surface lightly with flour, and placed the dough on the floured surface.
Okay, now it’s time for the measuring part! If you have a ruler, this will help you. If you don’t have a ruler, I hope your good at guesstimating!
You want to roll the dough out to be a 12×18 rectangle. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Trust me. My bread was living proof. It wasn’t perfect by any means. It tasted amazing though. That’s all that matters in the end!
When your dough is all rolled out into a rectangle, add your thinly sliced cubes of cold butter to one side of the dough. I think this is where I messed up a bit. My cubes weren’t as thin as they should have been. The next few steps would have been a lot easier if the slices were thinner. Keep that in mind!
Fold the other half of the dough completely over the butter, and roll out with a rolling pin. Roll it back into a 12×18 rectangle.
When its rolled out, fold 1/3 of the dough into center, and the other 1/3 over that folded piece, so there are 3 dough layers.
It should look like the above photo. Or somewhat like it!
Cover with plastic wrap and place in freezer for about 25 minutes.
Take dough out of freezer and place on floured surface, roll out again, into a 12×18 rectangle.
Look at all of that butter! Roll your dough into a log once it’s all rolled out.
Cut the log in half. Grease two loaf or bread pans with butter or non stick cooking spray.
Place the two logs of bread in greased pans, cover and let rise for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Now, this part didn’t work very well for me. My logs of dough did not rise, like at all. I’m not sure why. So if the same thing happens to you, don’t worry!
Time to bake! Brush your loaves with some egg and bake your loaves of bread in a preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes! You want the tops to be a nice dark golden brown!
As you can see, there is no perfect loaf of bread here, and I’m okay with that!
Look at those beautiful layers of flaky, buttery goodness!!!
This bread tasted great while it was still warm. Just a suggestion, but I bet it would taste amazing toasted!
I hope you try to make this recipe! If you do, make sure to share it with me. Id love to see your results! Post a photo on instagram and tag me @thehungrylyoness! Or send me a private message on Instagram or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thehungrylyoness/ and ‘Ill make sure to share it to my page!