Not A Cooks Blog ... Mastering French Cuisine With Julia Child ... (Once A Week): Series Three: Part Three

Back to basics with bread and water (fresh) is the theme this week after a local district water supply is under investigation for contamination. The local populace of Havelock North is suffering in high proportions from gastroenteritis and the region is high alert with local council, health agencies and the like running around trying to control this little nasty. Lucky for us living in the country we have our own supply of water. Although that in itself can be a problem, youngest daughter had insisted we had a filter jug to give our rain water catchment another layer of cleansing. So with a family stay at home weekend, clean water and everyone all in good health I decided to try out a traditional Brioche - the king of breads for our Sunday lunch.

According to Wikipedia, Brioche is considered a Viennoiserie, in that it is made in the same basic way as bread, but has the richer aspect of a pastry because of the extra addition of eggs, butter, liquid (milk, water, cream, and, sometimes, brandy) and occasionally a bit of sugar. Cordon Bleu Cookery Course 51 provides the recipe for brioches, brioche loaf and brioche buns. The loaf and buns are traditionally cooked in fluted tins. In an overzealous shopping spree at a kitchen shop I had purchased a loaf brioche tin and it had been patiently waiting for me in the cupboard for over a year. Almost as bad as Sonny Bill William's lack of commitment to one code of sport, I too was guilty and moved my allegiance from CB to Will Torrent's "Patisserie at home" cookery book. And I suffered the cooking world's equivalent to an Achilles heel rupture!

I had that uneasy "this doesn't feel right" at the start. I followed the instructions of sprinkling the dried yeast into the flour mix (with no attempt to activate first in sugar and warm water). Second alert was when the expectation is that the dough should "feel very wet and messy to start with but this is good" and mine was dry and crumby (this is bad!). Third warning sign was that after leaving the brioche to rise overnight it looked no different in the morning as it did the night before. Nor did it raise when left uncovered for an additional 2 hours (although by this stage my level of expectation of success was as that of the NZ male 7's Olympic team after the game against Japan).

The skewer came out of the brioche with a glue like substance around it after the recommended baking time. After doubling the cooking time and my patience slipping away I retrieved it out of the oven and plopped it in front of the family. I had made a giant scone!

Luckily we like scones, so we carved out the best bits and spread some jam on. The rest went to the sheep! Like the local water supply it may take some investigation of what went wrong... and word to self ... don't take the basics for granted!