Brioche Sliders

This should really be subtitled: "Jenna Still Isn't Very Good with Yeast" because few things are more accurate than that statement.

While I've had plenty of experience baking loaves of pumpkin bread, zucchini bread and the likes, working with yeast isn't one of my stronger skills. I think mainly because it takes so much time and time can be hard to come by. Don't get me wrong, I like to bake with yeast. I like smelling what baking with yeast smells like. I'm just not that good at it.

Now that I have some extra time on my hands, I decided this is the perfect time to work on those recipes that take a little more time.

Some friends brought back a pack of pork belly from the (not so) local H-Mart. If you're keeping track at home, I'm funny about pork products. I happen to like it in Asian cuisine and as ground sausage or sausage patties. I don't particularly care for pork chops, roast pork, smoked bacon, or link sausage. I don't understand either. It's a mix of texture and taste reasons why I like some and not others.

At first I thought about making bao but then I realized I had everything I needed to make brioche. So sliders edged out bao (maybe another day) and I found myself making my first batch of brioche dough.

Ingredients: flour, sugar, yeast, salt, milk, butter, eggs

This did not go so well. I'm not sure what the problem was. My money is on my lack of skills with yeast and the recipe being wrong. Regardless, the dough was runny, which is not a very good look for bread.

So batch one went down the garbage disposal.

Attempt 2: Fingers Crossed

Not to be beaten by food, I immediately decided to give it another shot. The second batch looked a little better but the consistency of the dough was still a bit concerning. The dry yeast packets come in a three-pack so I figured, if this batch fails there's always one more pack left.

I let the dough rise for one hour and it did, in fact, double in size. Now, the recipe I was following was for the food processor. I (#1) did not think rising dough in a food processor sounded like a good idea. I (#2) do not own a food processor. So my dough was made in my KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-Quart Mixer. Instead of letting the dough rise in the mixer (or food processor), which made zero sense to me, I transferred it to a bowl and let it rise on the stovetop with the oven preheated.

When I punched it down, the whole thing deflated. I thought this seemed like bad news bears so I researched some additional recipes. After reading a handful of recipes, it seemed like this particular one I was using was pretty low on flour. While many called for 3 or more cups of flour, this one only called for 2.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I added some more flour to the dough to firm it up a bit. I rolled it into slider-sized balls and let it rise again for another hour. I was lucky that dough double in size, too.

Slider-sized Dough

Sandwich-sized Dough

The sliders ended up baking for about 11 minutes and the sandwich-sized ones baked for close to 14. I was really nervous about these, especially since I had so many issues with the dough. Would the stay flat? Would we use the for hockey pucks? Who knew?

Luckily, they turned out  just fine, perhaps slightly drier than I'd hoped, but fine nonetheless.

Next time I plan to try a different recipe. This one just didn't work out as well for me as I'd hoped. Maybe there was just something I was missing. If you have any tips or a recipe you'd like to share, I'm interested in both!

To see what I did with the slider buns, check it out here.