renewed

i have just had the best view of fireworks ever. sitting across the river from the floating platform, and high up on the spectator stand.

there's just something magical about watching lights dancing across the night sky. showering down on everyone.

and, about a brioche, which melanie loved, and wouldn't share with me:

a brioche is a thing of magic. with so much butter in a dough, it is amazing it even comes together at all. by hand, it would take much effort. but of course i use the mixer nowadays.

hamelman scales down the yeast in this formula by a lot, perhaps on purpose, to lengthen the rising and proofing times. so i left the dough out for more than five hours, waiting for them to get puffy.

the smell of baking brioche is heavenly. and the colour the crust takes on is golden. and as soon as the buns are out of the oven, i invert and hang them upside down to prevent them from collapsing back - this is not written by hamelman, but i learnt from making rich panettone, and followed suit.

baking is only meaningful when there are people to give the food away to.