Itinerant Jason: Brioche: My Obsession

Brioche. I get a food boner just thinking the word. I'm slightly obsessed with it. When food blogger Tony Tahhan came to visit the CIA we had a great conversation about blogging, bread and especially brioche. He wrote a whole blog post about our conversation.
I love brioche because it is a wonderful wonderful half bread, half butter pastry. It is so classic, yet so versatile. It can be full fat, half fat, whole wheat, sweet or savory; either way it makes great hamburger buns, french toast, waffles, donuts, pastries and if you feel particularly naughty you can laminate it!(the process of folding butter in between layers of dough)
During my time in back of house Apple Pie Bakery Cafe (APBC), the student run cafe at the Culinary Institute of America, I worked the brioche station. Every morning I was responsible for making a slew of pastries made out of brioche. During my class evaluation with the chef of the cafe, Francisco Migoya, he made a comment to me that brioche is so versatile that you could have an entire bakery of brioche products. I don't know if he saw that light bulb switch on over my head but he planted a seed that day. I had long been an ardent rejecter of any notion that I would one day own my own place. "too much work" I always replied, but secretly, I day-dream about a successful bakery cafe that only sells brioche products. Of course it would have to be somewhere where the customers do not care about butter consumption... maybe if Paula Dean sponsored it...
There are any number of ways that I could make a brioche item for my graduation open house. Since I'm having a hard time picking one, I'll make three. The first is my take on one of the pastries I made at APBC: a brioche fruit tart. The second is a miniature version of the national bread of Belgium: Craquelin. The third is another classic Belgian preparation: a waffle.

Brioche can be difficult to make at home, you need a strong, powerful mixer. My professional series Kitchen Aid is a very strong mixer, however, every time I make brioche I put it within seconds of overheating and breaking. To give my mixer a break, I usually start the dough in the mixer until it comes together. Then I remove the dough and hand knead the dough to full gluten development.
This can take quite a few minutes and gives my arm muscles an intense work out!
After the dough has reached intense gluten development, I return it to the mixer and start adding butter, small pliable pieces at a time until it is all incorporated.

This is called the window. It shows gluten development. If the dough pulls apart when stretched, the gluten development is light. If you can pull the dough very thinly and see light through the other side without tearing holes in the dough, it has reached full gluten development.