Recipe for Pain au lait

• 1kg bread flour
• 100g sugar
• 10g active dry yeast (approximately a pack, maybe less)
• 400g milk (cold)
• 4 eggs (200g)
• 200g butter
• 18g salt
• TOTAL: 2Kg

Additional ingredients for flavors:

• Rhum
• lemon zest from 1 lemon
• 100g raisins

Put butter at room temperature to soften as a cream. Mix flour, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl. Add milk and eggs. Add rhum and lemon zest. Mix until it forms a dough. Knead slowly during 5mins, add salt, knead for another 5 mins. Add butter all at once. knead until the butter is completely integrated (at least 5 mins), dough is uniform and looks great. Add raisins. Place dough in a container (large enough to let the dough rise). Let it rest for 1 hour at room temperature. Refrigerate overnight or for at least 6 hours.

Take dough out of the fridge. Cut into 14 pieces of 80g. Roll them into round balls. A flower requires 7 balls. Place them in hexagon on a baking sheet. Cover each one with a cake mold, to avoid air contact. Let them rise for between 1h to 1h15min. Paint them with egg and bake at 375-390F without convection or 350F with convection for 20-25 minutes until the brioche becomes golden on top.

With this recipe you can make 3 flowers and there will be a little of dough remaining for small brioche the shape you want. Or you can make 2 flowers and one threaded brioche. I’ll explore threaded brioche in another post but the picture is there at the end.

With this recipe you can make 3 flowers or 2 flowers and one threaded brioche. I’ll explore threaded brioche in another post.