Baking Bouchon - Recipe 82: Nanterre

Oh look, more bread.  In an effort to speed up the completion of the bread chapter of the Bouchon Bakery Cookbook I tackled two breads in a row.  I figured that because the last one was English Muffins it was more like breakfast than anything else so I could stand to make a non-breakfast bread.

You'll be happy to know that this bread didn't make me grumpy.  In fact, it made me pretty happy.  The cookbook recommends that this bread be used to make BLTs and you don't have to tell me to eat bacon twice.

This bread is actually brioche which is a bread enriched with butter and eggs which makes it much more tasty and interesting than regular bread.  The same method is used to make Sticky Buns and Hot Cross Buns.  Basically you make a regular bread dough and that has some eggs in it and knead in a crap load of butter.  Every time I've made the brioche recipe I don't believe that the butter will ever incorporate into the dough but after enough kneading with the dough hook it eventually does. 

Nanterre is a classic brioche shaped like a loaf.  I don't know why it's called that.  The internet revealed a city in France named Nanterre but I can't find any link between it and the name of the bread. 

The recipe makes two loaves of bread but I only have one regular sized loaf pan so I ended up making one regular sized loaf and two mini loaves. 

Forming the loaf is a bit different than you might expect, it's actually a series of little dough balls placed in the pan and proofed until they touch.  When they bake they all join together.  I was skeptical that this would actually happen but this bread proofs for three hours so it did happen eventually.

The loaves baked up really nicely and were golden brown.

Somewhere between proofing and baking my camera decided to only take pictures that look like you're on the surface of the sun.  My camera is really starting to annoy me.

My only complaint here is that I wish the bread had baked up a little taller than it did.  Not because I felt like it didn't rise enough but because I wanted to fit more bacon on it when I made my BLT.  Actually, mine was a BL because I'm not a big fan of raw tomatoes unless they're really good tomatoes.  CA is less picky about his tomatoes so I photographed his BLT.  I also do not eat mayonnaise because it's one of the most disgusting things on the planet so my BL contains Miracle Whip which is so much better.  CA hates Miracle Whip but likes mayonnaise.  He's weird.

Luckily, I was smart enough to realize that because the bread was shorter than desired, I had to make myself two BLT's.  That way I got my full daily allowance of bacon.

This bread was really great with the BLT.  The light and butter texture pairs really well with the salty bacon, crunchy lettuce and (I assume) the tomato.

Maybe I've turned a corner in the bread department.  There are some good ones coming up like cheese bread sticks and pretzels so I think I'm out of the woods.

Enjoy!
Julie