Brioche Crescents and Brioche Parisienne - Day 2

The morning of day 2, I pulled the brioche dough out of the fridge and prepared to turn it into two variations of Brioche, as outlined in The New Complete Book of Breads by Bernard Clayton. Since it has no illustrations, I looked for images to confirm the appearance of these type of Brioche.

First I divided the dough into 2/3 and 1/3 and put the smaller piece back in the fridge, while I made the following. The dough was stiff and puffy, but easy to work.

Brioche Crescents:

This required rolling the dough out into a rectangle, about 10 inches by 34 inches, and then cutting it lengthwise in half. Then each strip was cut into triangles, Each triangle was then rolled up from the wide end to form a crescent. These were placed on a parchment covered baking tray . Each crescent was brushed with an egg/milk wash and left to rise till doubled in size. This took about 45 minutes

Oven was pre-heated to 450 degrees and crescents were baked for about 25 minutes till golden brown.

Brioche Parisienne:

The rest of the dough was taken out of the fridge, and cut it into 10 to 12 pieces. Each of these were rolled into balls and placed in a zigzag pattern into a greased bread pan. Some of the smaller balls were used to fill in the spaces. Pan was covered with plastic and left to rise. This too more than 2 hours.

Oven was pre-heated to 350 degrees and the Brioche was baked about 50 minutes till golden brown.


Results were fine. Lovely light crust and soft crumb. Great with butter and jam!

What I don't understand though is why the difference in baking temperature? As I venture further into my study of the chemistry and mystery of bread making, I'm sure I'll figure it out!