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Whisk the warm water, warm milk, yeast, and sugar together in the bowl. Cover and allow to sit for 5 minutes.
Add the butter, salt, and half of the flour, mix it. Add the remaining flour and mix again.
Knead the dough by hand on a lightly floured surface for 5–8 full minutes. If the dough becomes too sticky during the kneading process, sprinkle 1 teaspoon of flour at a time on the dough or on the work surface/in the bowl to make a soft, slightly tacky dough. Do not add more flour than you need; you do not want a dry dough. After kneading, the dough should still feel a little soft. Poke it with your finger—if it slowly bounces back, your dough is ready to rise. You can also do a “windowpane test” to see if your dough has been kneaded long enough: tear off a small (roughly golf-ball-size) piece of dough and gently stretch it out until it’s thin enough for light to pass through it. Hold it up to a window or light. Does light pass through the stretched dough without the dough tearing first? If so, your dough has been kneaded long enough and is ready to rise. If not, keep kneading.
Lightly grease a large bowl with olive oil or nonstick spray. Place the dough in the bowl, turning it to coat all sides in the oil. Cover the bowl and allow the dough to rise in a relatively warm environment until double in size (approximately 1 hour).
Grease 12×22-cm loaf pan or cover it with baking paper.
When the dough is ready, punch it down to release the air. Lightly flour a work surface, your hands, and a rolling pin. Roll the dough out into a large rectangle. Roll it up into a log and place in the prepared loaf pan.
Cover shaped loaf with aluminum foil, plastic wrap, or a clean kitchen towel. Allow to rise until it’s about 1 inch above the top of the loaf pan, about 1 hour.
Adjust oven rack to a lower position and preheat oven to 180°C. (It’s best to bake the bread towards the bottom of the oven so the top doesn’t burn.)
Bake for 30 minutes inside a baking sleeve and then 5 min without a sleeve (sleeve is not necessary to use). If you notice the top browning too quickly, loosely tent the pan with aluminum foil. To test for doneness, if you gently tap on the loaf, it should sound hollow. For a more accurate test, the bread is done when an instant-read thermometer reads the center of the loaf as 90–93°C.
Remove from the oven and allow bread to cool on a cooling rack at least for an hour before slicing.
Cover leftover bread tightly and store at room temperature for 6 days or in the refrigerator for up to 10 days.
For fresh summer flavor, add sweet corn, sharp cheddar, and chopped cilantro to your brioche dough.
Allam and McGuinness suggest using their master brioche dough for sweet pizzas: roll the the cold dough out onto a sheet of parchment, proof until fluffy, then dimple all over with your fingers. Top with a mixture of ricotta and pastry cream, and whatever gorgeous fresh fruit you have on hand before baking on a preheated pizza stone. Thomas Payne
For perfect canapé cups, roll chilled brioche out just like pie dough, press into tart rings or muffin tins, and blind-bake until crispy. We filled ours with duck liver mousse and finished with a drizzle of lemon agrumato and a pinch of chopped chives.
The mother dough moves easily between sweet and savory, making as much sense braided into an Italian-style Easter loaf or fried into BSB’s sugared chocolate donuts as it does blind-baked in tiny retro tart tins and filled with duck liver mousse.
Bourke Street Bakery rolls these brioche donuts in cinnamon sugar before filling with fudgy milk chocolate ganache.
Once mixed, brioche dough can be fermented and baked like any bread, though professional bakers typically chill it overnight in the fridge. The buttery dough firms up while it ferments, making it easier to shape into any number of sweet or savory treats.
Allam recommends mixings savory ingredients into the brioche dough before baking. “As we do not change the dough, it is good to pick flavors that are a little salty or sour to challenge the inherent sweetness of the dough,” he says. We loved his suggestions of chorizo and Parmesan, as well as sautéed shallots, preserved lemon, and black pepper.