I’m no baker, but I sure love eating baked goods! So when I took my first ever Baking with Brioche workshop, I was both excited and a little daunted. Luckily I already spent a day in the bakery, which gave me a basic understanding of shaping dough. But on this lovely Monday evening I was in for something extra-special.

For those who don’t know, brioche is a French-style yeasted pastry. Just because it’s slightly sweet doesn’t mean that it has to be part of a dessert or a sugary pastry though. Brioche is very versatile in the way it can be used for both sweet and savoury dishes.

Hi Don!

Tonight our training instructor is Don, whose Irish accent is jovial (it could be the fact that he also likes making jokes throughout the class). Don lets us taste a bit of the Brasserie Bread Brioche Tin Loaf with butter and jam. Not a bad start to the class!

Brioche plait (clearly not mine!)

The class goes a little bit in reverse. We start by shaping the pre-made brioche dough into various shapes and sizes. We make traditional brioche pastry, a plait, a little tin loaf (super cute) and sticky buns. The sticky buns are by far my favourite. The gooey, cinnamony, honey flavours are just melt-in-your-mouth perfect. The tiny tin loaf could pass for a toy.

My 'rustic' creations

We also make some brioche with apricots and with chocolate chips. What’s great is that you can use whatever ingredients you have in your pantry when you’re making brioche at home. Think nuts, dried fruits, and seasonal fruits.

Then the class takes a savoury turn. We make coulibiac, a traditional Russian dish. Our coulibiac has salmon, mushroom and onion, hard-boiled egg and mustard (we use Cunliffe & Waters Count Vasiliev’s Russian Mustard which I found has a wasabi-like heat – we sell it in our retail store if you’re interested) all wrapped in a pancake first. Then the entire pancake with its contents is enfolded in a brioche layer. To prettify it, we cut a design in it with scissors to make a spiky exterior.

Coulibiac for dinner

After we’ve baked the coulibiac, we get to eat it. A little dinner table is set up in the café where we can greedily eat our freshly baked coulibiac with a glass of wine. Over dinner Don tells us that we can make the coulibiac with other types of protein too. He suggests making it with lamb (you’d have to seal it off first before wrapping it in the pancake) or any other fish. My personal suggestion is to make it with vegetables. I think a vegetarian variation would be delightful (I’m not that much of a carnivore though, so that’d be why).

Scraping the brioche dough

The last part of the class is learning how to actually make the dough. This is where it gets intense (and messy!). We mix milk, eggs, yeast, salt and sugar, which results in very – I repeat, very – sticky dough. Our hands are completely covered in dough, and it never comes off (well, until you rub and wash it off at the end). Disclaimer: this is probably not the best class for OCD people.

Don explains that the way we knead brioche dough is to imitate the movements of a mixer. We hit the dough on the table, and then fold it over. We do this for a few minutes. Then we scrape the dough into a ball, dust it with flour and wait for a couple minutes. We repeat the whole process two or three more times. Then we add butter (and wow, it’s a whole lotta of butter). And the hitting-folding process begins again. This is when the dough starts to come together (and starts to become less sticky).

If you’re anything like me and you really, really wanna eat some brioche but you’re just too lazy to bake it at home, you can buy our brioche range at our Cafes. We have a Brioche Tin Loaf (great for bread and butter pudding and French toast) and Brioche Burger Buns (for you Heston fans, that perfect burger is looking more and more feasible).

Up until September we have no more Baking with Brioche workshops (sad face), but our Training Manager Matt is finalising the baking class calendar for October, November and December as we speak. Fingers crossed that it includes more brioche classes! In fact, I think you should call him at 1300 966 845 or send him an enquiry here: beg and plead until he schedules in more brioche classes for you.

In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled on our course calendar for all of our baking classes. Also, here’s a little tip: it’s good to book about a few weeks in advance. Our baking classes book out quickly, as you can see by the abundance of red boxes on the course calendar.

Make your booking by calling 1300 966 845 or enquiring online.