Eggless Pumpkin Brioche

I love brioche. It is not a long love story though. It started when I converted a brioche recipe into my 'Eggless Brioche'. I made the same into a long loaf and used in 'Iyengar Bakery Toast'. I never had thought of existence of brioche recipes which use pumpkin or butternut squash. But, these recipes are out there. I didn't follow any such recipe, but worked on a brioche recipe from a book. Used pumpkin puree and made these 'Eggless Pumpkin Brioche'. This recipe can be tweaked into many different flavors of brioche. I have cut down on butter in this so much that anyone can eat brioche without feeling guilty. I adapted this recipe from 'Maida Heatter's Best Dessert Book Ever'. She has a section for breakfast breads with yeast and sourdough and this recipe is based on her 'Fruit and Nut Brioche Loaf'. This recipe had more butter and eggs. It has lot of nuts and dry fruits added. I omitted them and used pumpkin puree and some spices. I did not add nuts as my kids will pick around it and make a mess.

Ingredients:

• Butter - 4 TBSP or 1/2 a stick. You could use I can't believe its not butter 
• White sugar - 1/4 cup (I might increase this to 6 TBSP next time since it was not very sweet)
• Warm water - 1/4 cup
• Active dry yeast - 2 1/4 tsp
• Bread Flour - 3  - 3 1/4 cup
• Salt - 3/4 tsp
• Pumpkin puree - 1 cup measured in dry measuring cup. I used home made but canned will work just fine.

Optional Spices:

• Cinnamon powder - 1 tsp
• Cloves powder - 1/2 tsp
• All spice powder - 1/2 tsp
• Ginger powder - 1/2 tsp
• Nutmeg powder - 1/4 tsp

Method:
Breadmachine method to make the dough:
I used a breadmachine and made the dough on dough cycle. Place the ingredients in the pan in the order: water,salt, sugar,butter cut into cubes, pumpkin puree, 3 cups of flour, yeast and spices if using. Turn it on. Check for the dough consistency at the end of the first kneading cycle and add the extra 1/4 cup of flour if required.

Manual method to make the dough:
Melt the butter. Add yeast to warm water in a bowl and let it froth. When ready, add salt, sugar, pumpkin puree, butter and stir. Add spice powders if using now. Slowly start adding the flour to make a smooth dough. Knead very well for 10 - 15 minutes. You can do this in a stand mixer too.
Take the kneaded dough and place in a well oiled bowl. Cover and let it rest for an hour or till double in volume. If using breadmachine, you can wait for the dough cycle to complete and then remove and shape the loaf. When double, punch down the dough to deflate and shape into a loaf and place in 9 X 5 loaf pan sprayed with vegetable oil spray. This makes a very big loaf, so if you have a little larger pan, go ahead and use. I have a 10 X 5 1/2 pan which I should've used instead of this. If you have 8 X 4 pans, you can use it to make two smaller loaves. Cover loosely with an oiled aluminum foil and let it rise for about 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. When ready, take a sharp scissor and make 6 cuts parallel to the short side of the pan. I was done with cutting when my kid wanted to do it too. I couldn't say 'No' and let her do it again on the same slits and mine became zigzag. Make sure the cuts are at least 1/4" deep. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove the pan and cover loosely with aluminum foil. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 F and bake for an additional 25 minutes or till the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. You could shaped these into traditional brioche form. Give an egg glaze to make it look prettier.
Slice after completely cooled down. I couldn't wait that longer and sliced it when still warm. It tastes heavenly as it is and the book says to toast and serve with butter, jam or marmalade. My kids loved it too. Smell of baking this bread is heavenly.

These are on way to Susan's 'Yeast Spotting' hosted here.
And this is my entry to 'Baking from a book - Breakfast' hosted by me here.

Happy Baking!! Pin It