How to Make Brioche Dough (Step-by-Step Guide)

I love this brioche dough recipe, and I'm so excited to share it with you. It's soft and rich (from lots of butter) and tastes amazing. My recipe uses unbleached all-purpose flour and bread flour, resulting in a soft, tender loaf with a nice chew.  The recipe starts with a preferment and ends with an overnight proof in the refrigerator, which intensifies the flavor. This recipe makes enough for two brioche loaves.

In this blog post and recipe card, I walk you through the details of making brioche dough from scratch, sharing tips from my extensive testing to help you achieve the perfect result. This dough is the start for many delicious recipes, including my Brioche Loaf and Brioche au Sucre (aka brioche buns with pearl sugar).

About This Brioche Dough Recipe

This bread recipe starts with a preferment or a dough starter. I mix a portion of the flour with the milk and yeast and allow it to ferment for about 45-60 minutes, until it's risen and bubbly.

This quick fermentation gives the yeast a head start, resulting in a more flavorful brioche with a deeper golden color. It also helps to strengthen the gluten structure, leading to a more open crumb and better rise. (While this might seem like an extra step, it allows the yeast to activate and get to work early, resulting in a richer flavor and improved rise.)

The overnight chill allows the dough to develop more flavor and breaks down the gluten, which results in a more tender loaf of bread. Chilling the dough also makes it easier to work with. The dough is very soft after the first rise, so chilling the dough is a must. If you're short on time, you can reduce the chill time to 4 hours.

Key Techniques for Perfect Brioche Dough

• Resting the Dough Before Adding Butter: One of the key tricks I learned from watching an old episode of a Julia Child cooking show is to let the dough rest for 15 minutes before incorporating the butter. This simple step makes a noticeable difference, making the butter much easier to work into the dough.
• The Importance of a Preferment: Another essential step is the preferment, which is a small mixture of flour, milk, and yeast. It helps develop a subtle yet distinctive flavor in the dough. Allowing the preferment to rise fully before mixing it into the dough enhances the depth of flavor in the final bread.
• Keep Your Butter Cool: Keeping your butter cool (around 65°F) is crucial. Cool butter incorporates more smoothly and prevents the dough from becoming too warm and sticky. This ensures the dough maintains its structure and is easier to handle during mixing and shaping.

Brioche dough is one of those things you learn to make. I tested this recipe 8 times, to understand the techniques, the things that can go wrong, the mistakes I made so I could share that information with you. If you at first you don't succeed don't be discouraged, be exciting about what you're learning.

Understanding the Brioche Dough Formula

Scaling a recipe is easier when you understand the formula behind it. Brioche dough follows a specific ratio of ingredients to maintain its texture and structure. Here’s how this recipe breaks down by weight:

Ingredient	Weight (g)	Percentage
Total Flour (Bread and All-Purpose)	406g	100%
Whole Milk	80g	20%
Active Dry Yeast	10g	2.5%
Granulated Sugar	38g	9.4%
Large Eggs	200g	49%
Kosher Salt	7g	1.7%
Unsalted Butter	200g	49%

How I Developed This Formula

I didn’t just want to make brioche, I wanted to understand how to make it. I spent time reading through my cookbooks and researching online articles to identify the typical ingredient ratios used in classic brioche recipes. I found that a 1:1 ratio of butter to eggs and a 2:1 ratio of flour to both eggs and butter were common in many traditional formulas.

From there, I adjusted the sugar based on my personal taste preferences. The amount of milk was fine-tuned through multiple tests, I found that this specific quantity provided the right hydration to create a smooth, workable dough without making it too sticky or lumpy. Understanding these proportions allows you to confidently scale the recipe while maintaining its perfect balance of richness, softness, and structure.

Tips for Success

• Refrigerate Before Shaping: The dough is much easier to handle after chilling, preventing stickiness and making shaping easier.
• Keep Butter Cool: Butter at 65°F incorporates best and keeps the dough cool, preventing it from becoming too sticky.
• Be Patient with Mixing: It takes time for the butter to fully incorporate. Scrape down the bowl as needed.
• Check the Yeast Expiration Date: One of the first things to do is check the expiration date on the package of yeast. If it's past the due date, go get a fresh package.

Brioche Dough Ingredients

I love the combination of bread flour and all-purpose flour. The bread flour gives the brioche a nice chew, while the all-purpose flour provides a nice soft crumb. The combination of the two provides the best of both worlds.

If you don't have bread flour, you can make this brioche with all-purpose flour.

• Bread Flour & All-Purpose Flour: I use a 50/50 mix of bread flour and AP flour. Bread flour adds strength and chewiness, while AP flour keeps the crumb soft. You can use all AP flour, but the texture will be slightly different.
• Active Dry Yeast: Provides the rise and fermentation needed to develop structure and flavor. For this recipe, I prefer using active dry yeast instead of instant yeast for the fermentation process.
• Whole Milk: Hydrates the dough and helps create a tender crumb. Since flour is hygroscopic and can dry out or absorb moisture from the air in a humid climate, you may need to add 1 or 2 tablespoons of additional milk when you're mixing the dough so it forms a smooth ball.
• Eggs: Add richness, flavor, and structure. Since the recipe ingredients are based on the weight of ingredients, weigh your eggs to ensure you're adding enough. Don't go by just the number of eggs, especially if you're using something other than conventionally raised grade A large eggs.
• Unsalted Butter: The key ingredient that makes brioche so rich tasting. It adds richness and softens the texture. I tested this bread with both American-style sweet cream butter and European cultured butter. Both types work for this recipe, but the dough was softer and a little harder to handle with the European butter. I started testing this recipe with American-style butter, so the amount of flour is based on the fat content in that butter, which makes it easier to handle when all the mixing is done. My preferred butter is Tillamook butter, which is 81 percent butter fat. Just 1 percent below the Kerrygold I tested it with, but that 1 percent made a big difference in handling the dough.
• Granulated Sugar: If it's an enriched dough, it has sugar. One of the benefits of brioche is that you can use it as a dessert because of the amount of sugar. The amount of sugar sweetens the dough and helps it to brown during baking.
• Kosher Salt: Enhances flavor and balances sweetness. Even though salt is a small percentage of the overall recipe, your brioche will taste flat without it

Full ingredients, measurements, and instructions are in the recipe card at the bottom of this post.

What to Make After the Dough is Finished

Once you've made this amazing brioche dough, here are two of my recipes that use this dough.

• Brioche Loaf: A classic, beautifully soft bread perfect for slicing. This bread is great for breakfast, or a snack.
• Brioche au Sucre: A lightly sweetened brioche topped with pearl sugar for a delightful treat. These little buns make a great snack for tea time, or for a gathering with friends.

How to Make Brioche Dough from Scratch

Use this section for process shots, alternating between the step and image showing the step. Users don't like seeing process shots cluttering up the recipe card, so include your process shots here.

1. Make the Preferment

A preferment (a small mixture of flour, milk, and yeast) is used to develop a deeper flavor in the dough. It should rise for at least 45 minutes or until tripled in volume.

2. Mix the Dough

The preferment is combined with the remaining flour, eggs, milk, sugar, and salt. Knead in a stand mixer on low speed until the dough passes the window pane test.

3. Rest the Dough

Step 10: Let the dough rest for 15 minutes before adding the butter. This step makes it easier to incorporate the butter.

4. Incorporate the Butter

This process takes patience. At first, the butter will sit on top of the dough, but eventually, it will work into it smoothly.

Step 13: Once all the butter is incorporated, continue kneading until the dough passes the window pane test again.

5. Chill the Dough

Step 18: Refrigerate the dough for at overnight or up to 24 hours. The long fermentation develops even more flavor. If you're in a hurry you can use the dough after 4 hours. It will be cold enough to handle.

Did you make this recipe? If you have questions about making brioche dough, please leave a comment below. And if you made and enjoyed it please leave a rating and a comment below.

Connect with me on Instagram and tag me @bakesbybrownsugar to share your recipe remake photos.

Like what you see? Click here to subscribe to Bake's by Brown Sugar Baking Newsletter to get free and delicious treats delivered to your inbox.