We started out by making a sponge from equal weights of bread flour and milk and a bit of fresh yeast. Someone mentioned seeing compressed yeast at the Bulk Barn; I'm going to have to see for myself. I don't like to use it, because I don't make bread all that often and it only has a shelf life of a few weeks. At home, I usually mix the sponge by hand for less than a minute, but we did ours in the mixer for a good five minutes.

After 20 minutes bench time, we degassed the dough and divided it using the dough divider into 36 pieces. To make the traditional à tête shape, we pinched off a tiny piece, rounded the remaining piece then nestled the smaller ball on top of the larger one. Due to the butter and warm classroom, I could see a shine developing on the dough if I worked it too much. Fortunately, I've gotten lots of practise in shaping rolls so I didn't make too much of a mess. Instead of using fluted molds, we baked our breads in greased muffin tins. After a light egg wash and a stint in the proofer, Chef baked them in the oven.
As she warned, many of the heads rolled off to one side after baking. Some recipes call for poking a hole in the dough then looping one end through to form the head. Anyway, the brioches were rich and buttery as you would expect, suitable for a calorie-enriched diet, ha ha. They weren't very sweet though, I would have preferred using a bit more sugar.
Cream Puff's writeup (we're in the same class!) is here.
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