Best Sourdough Brioche Recipe (Beginner Friendly)

Published Categorized as Sourdough Bread Recipes Tagged

Brioche bread is absolutely fantastic, especially when enjoyed as part of your breakfast. Toasted and smeared with raspberry jam to create the perfect bite. But what happens when sweet brioche bread, collabs with tangy sourdough? You get the best sourdough brioche recipe! Dive into this beginner-friendly recipe, and remember to have your sourdough starter ready!

Best sourdough brioche recipe (beginner friendly)

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Sourdough brioche

Sourdough Brioche Bread Recipe

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Have a go at this soft, tender, and enriched sourdough brioche bread recipe. Combining your favorite ingredients, to create one scrumptious loaf of sourdough brioche. Once you’ve taken a bite, there’s no going back!

  • Total Time: 20 hrs 10 mins
  • Yield: 2 loaves 1x

Ingredients

Scale

For the dough

  • 83g whole milk
  • 480g active sourdough starter
  • 6 whole eggs
  • 565g organic all-purpose flour
  • 20g organic cane sugar
  • 1 tbsp. unrefined sea salt
  • 1 cup unsalted butter (softened but firm)

For the egg wash

  • 1 whole egg
  • 1 tbsp. water

Instructions

  1. Place milk, sourdough starter, eggs, flour, and sugar into a large bowl or stand mixer bowl. Knead on medium-low using the dough hook for 5 minutes.
  2. Add salt while the mixer continues to spin.
  3. Add butter, one tablespoon at a time. Wait until each tablespoon has been kneaded before adding the next spoonful of butter.
  4. Let the mixer spin for 15-20 minutes, or until it passes the windowpane test. The windowpane test is essentially when you grab a piece of dough and stretch it out. If you can see light piercing through the dough just before it tears, it’s ready!
  5. Scrape the dough into a pre-greased glass bowl, then cover it with plastic wrap and allow this to ferment at room temperature for 1 hour. Place this in the refrigerator for 12 hours.
  6. Grease two 9×5-inch glass loaf pans then set them aside.
  7. Divide the dough into 2 separate balls, and form each dough ball into a loaf. You can braid the loaves, or create 6 individual buns for an easier finish.
  8. Place the loaves into the prepped loaf pans, then cover and allow them to rise, until they’ve almost doubled in size (2-8 hours).
  9. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
  10. Whisk together egg and water, then brush this on top of the puffed-up loaves.
  11. Bake the loaf of sourdough brioche in the preheated oven, until they turn a wonderful golden brown. This should take around 35-40 minutes.
  12. Remove the loaf and transfer it to a wire cooling rack. Let this cool for an hour before slicing.
  • Author: Natasha Krajnc
  • Prep Time: 19 hrs 40 mins
  • Cook Time: 40 mins
  • Category: bread
  • Cuisine: French

Nutrition

  • Serving Size: 1 slice
  • Calories: 178 kcal

Why Make a Brioche With Sourdough?

If you’re a fan of sourdough but also love brioche bread, then why not combine the two to create a wonderfully textured and incredibly flavorful brioche sourdough bread?

This soft and tender sourdough brioche loaf is enhanced with lots of butter, sugar, and eggs, to create the perfect moist crumb for you to indulge in.

And the great thing about sourdough brioche dough is that you can create a wonderful variety of treats with it: From brioche hamburger buns to brioche cinnamon rolls; brioche dough is a gift that keeps on giving!

Can Brioche Be Made From Sourdough?

Yes absolutely! The main component of any sourdough recipe is the sourdough starter or sourdough discard, which provides a unique tang to your recipes, whether you’re baking bread, muffins, or brownies, the sourdough tang will never go undetected!

For this particular sourdough brioche recipe, you’re going to need an active sourdough starter, especially if you’re attempting to capture the unique flavors and texture of traditional sourdough bread.

What Type of Sourdough Starter Do You Need For Brioche?

To be honest, you can use a regular sourdough starter to make sourdough brioche bread, as long as it’s active and fed before using it in your recipe.

What Is The Difference Between Sourdough and Brioche?

The difference between the two types of bread lies in brioche’s enriched dough, which makes it a little sweeter than sourdough. Since sourdough contains wild yeasts, the resulting loaf provides a subtle tang.

Along with the enriched dough, you also get that familiar soft brioche texture, along with its unique golden color, that is very distinct from sourdough’s brown or white crust.

Is Sourdough Brioche Bread Healthy?

While brioche does contain sugar, this brioche recipe utilizes a range of healthy elements, including the fermented sourdough starter which is crawling with a variety of health benefits. You can find out the numerous benefits of sourdough with: Is sourdough bread healthy?

Although brioche bread requires sugar, it’s only a small amount, while the large amounts of butter are perhaps enough to raise an eyebrow, the fact that this recipe requires elements of sourdough is what makes it slightly healthier than regular brioche bread.

Sourdough bread contains lots of vitamins and minerals, compared to other types of bread, as well as lower levels of phytate, enabling your body to absorb these nutrients easily. This is why combining a fantastic and tasty loaf like brioche bread with a healthier recipe like sourdough bread, transforms this not-so-healthy bread, into a healthier version.

Sourdough Brioche Bread Recipe

Have a go at this soft, tender, and enriched sourdough brioche bread recipe. Combining your favorite ingredients, to create one scrumptious loaf of sourdough brioche. Once you’ve taken a bite, there’s no going back!

  • Type: Bread
  • Cuisine: French
  • Recipe yield: 2 loaves
  • Calories: 178kcal
  • Preparation time: 19 hours 40 minutes
  • Cooking time: 40 minutes
  • Total time: 20H10M

Ingredients

For the dough

  • 83g whole milk
  • 480g active sourdough starter
  • 6 whole eggs
  • 565g organic all-purpose flour
  • 20g organic cane sugar
  • 1 tbsp. unrefined sea salt
  • 1 cup unsalted butter (softened but firm)

For the egg wash

  • 1 whole egg
  • 1 tbsp. water

Instructions

  1. Place milk, sourdough starter, eggs, flour, and sugar into a large bowl or stand mixer bowl. Knead on medium-low using the dough hook for 5 minutes.
  2. Add salt while the mixer continues to spin.
  3. Add butter, one tablespoon at a time. Wait until each tablespoon has been kneaded before adding the next spoonful of butter.
  4. Let the mixer spin for 15-20 minutes, or until it passes the windowpane test. The windowpane test is essentially when you grab a piece of dough and stretch it out. If you can see light piercing through the dough just before it tears, it’s ready!
  5. Scrape the dough into a pre-greased glass bowl, then cover it with plastic wrap and allow this to ferment at room temperature for 1 hour. Place this in the refrigerator for 12 hours.
  6. Grease two 9×5-inch glass loaf pans then set them aside.
  7. Divide the dough into 2 separate balls, and form each dough ball into a loaf. You can braid the loaves, or create 6 individual buns for an easier finish.
  8. Place the loaves into the prepped loaf pans, then cover and allow them to rise, until they’ve almost doubled in size (2-8 hours).
  9. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
  10. Whisk together egg and water, then brush this on top of the puffed-up loaves.
  11. Bake the loaf of sourdough brioche in the preheated oven, until they turn a wonderful golden brown. This should take around 35-40 minutes.
  12. Remove the loaf and transfer it to a wire cooling rack. Let this cool for an hour before slicing.

Nutrition

  • Calories: 178kcal
  • Carbohydrates: 30g
  • Protein: 7g
  • Fat: 10g
  • Saturated fat: 6g

Tips For Making Sourdough Brioche

  • The first thing you need to know about sourdough brioche is that the dough is a pretty wet dough. So even if you try to add more flour to the dough, in hopes to make it a little firmer, don’t. Simply put, too much dry flour will result in a tough loaf, rather than what you’re trying to achieve, which is a light and fluffy loaf of brioche.
  • If you don’t have all-purpose flour, you can use bread flour.
  • You can make this recipe vegan-friendly by using plant-based milk and butter, i.e., coconut oil and almond milk.
  • Ensure all your ingredients are at room temperature, as cold ingredients can slow down fermentation.
  • Your butter must be melted, but not hot, so make sure it’s lukewarm before it is added to the dough.
  • Use 100% hydrated sourdough starter, i.e., fed with equal parts flour and water.

Can You Make Sourdough Brioche Without Sugar

Truthfully, sourdough brioche is not brioche without the subtle sweetness that we all know and love. For this reason, eliminating sugar completely may take away the original flavors, and if this is what you want, then that is perfectly fine.

However, you can easily replace the sugar with something a little healthier, i.e., a dash of honey, or a natural sweetener like stevia to make this sweet and fluffy bread healthier.

Sourdough Brioche

Sourdough brioche makes the perfect weekend treat, and a true breakfast delight.

On that note, here are some wonderful and healthy sourdough breakfast recipes to try! And here are some brioche-like sourdough recipes you can make:

FAQs

What Makes Brioche Different to Most Breads?

Brioche is enriched with butter, eggs, milk, and a dash of sugar to create an incredibly soft and sweet taste.

Do You Need a Window Pane When Making Sourdough Brioche?

Not necessarily, but it’s a great way to show off gluten development in the dough.

Is Brioche Better With Bread Flour or All Purpose Flour?

All-purpose flour is a perfect choice for brioche, as it provides a perfectly soft and fluffy crumb. However, if you choose to use bread flour, it’ll result in a chewier loaf of bread.

By Natasha Krajnc

Hi! My name is Natasha and I'm specialized in home sourdough bread baking and currently based in Slovakia - a very small country in Central Europe. My bread baking story began in 2011 when I decided to give up commercial yeast. I felt tired all the time (especially after eating bread and other foods made with yeast), I wasn’t motivated to do anything, had trouble concentrating throughout the day, my abdomen was bloated and I was like a trumpet on steroids – basically, I was quite a wreck. I was a big bread lover (and still am) and having to stop eating bread was quite hard at that time but I felt I was on a right way to give my body a chance to heal itself.

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