Brioche Sweet Pizza with Berries

Three little words — brioche, sweet, pizza, capture the exquisite interplay among bread, pastry and pizza. Brioche begins as basic bread dough. Incorporate a good amount of butter into the lean bread dough, you get the silky and smooth enriched brioche dough. It is one of my favorite doughs to work and play with. If you’re already adept in making pizza, the brioche dough may extend your arsenals into the pastry territory.

In fact, the brioche dough is more forgiving than a lean bread dough. The only tricky part is mixing the ingredients, which include 30% to 40% of the total flour weight in butter. That is a large amount of butter to incorporate into the dough. Therefore, mechanical help from a stand-mixer is necessary. The overall mixing time is long — 15 minutes or more. It’s telling when you put my hand on top of the mixer, the motor runs screaming hot every time I mix the brioche dough. Yes, I sense the blinking red light. Stop!! Imagine doing all that beating by hand?

Take the butter out of the refrigerator half an hour before mixing. Make sure the butter is cold enough so that the dough doesn’t get greasy, and soft and pliable enough to incorporate into the dough. If it’s a hot day, keep all the ingredients cold. Refrigerate the mixing bowl and dough hook may help. No one wants to face a hot mess of a melting dough. Lastly, let the dough chill overnight to allow the butter to set.

In keeping with tradition, this brioche dough is made with natural young leaven. In addition, there is an overnight poolish in the recipe as well. The combination of the two brings a perfect balance to the rich buttery nature of the brioche. You can smell the buttery aroma when the dough is in the oven. However, the finished brioche comes out light, feathery and delectable with a subtle hint of sweetness. Like other sourdough leavened breads, the keeping qualities of the brioche are excellent.

The most ethereal quality of the brioche dough is how much it rises during bulk fermentation and in the oven. It’s a lively dough that seems unable to contain itself. In effect, a small amount of active dry yeast gives it another booster in the oven. It’s a sight to behold — from start to finish.

The brioche dough recipe yields nearly 4 pounds. I don’t mind to make more than I need because the dough holds up well to freezing. All you need is to take the frozen dough out and put it in the refrigerator to thaw overnight. It’ll be ready to shape and bake the next day.

The brioche dough is remarkably versatile. Shape it into traditional tête molds, pen loaves or rolls. Fashion it into savory (brie in brioche) or sweet applications. Among the easiest is to roll out the dough into thin rounds, ovals or rectangles and layer pastry cream (see recipe below), almond cream or mascarpone cream over the base. That becomes the canvas for your desired toppings of seasonal fruits or berries. Voila!

Finally, we get to showcase these lovely brioche sweet pizzas which have invaded my head space of late.

Print Recipe

Brioche Sweet Pizza with Berries and No-Fuss Pastry Cream

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 1 quantity Brioche dough (see recipe above), rested overnight
• 500g ricotta
• 500g pastry cream
• 250g fresh raspberries
• 125g fresh blackberries
• ½ lemon, juiced
• confectioners sugar. for dusting
• NO-FUSS PASTRY CREAM:
• 1¼ cups/300g milk
• ½ cup/100g granulated sugar
• ¼ cup/30g all purpose flour
• ½ tsp kosher salt
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

1

Place rested brioche dough on a clean work surface dusted with flour. Roll out dough into a 8 inch/20cm-diameter disc, about 5/8 inch/1.5cm thick. (Don’t worry too much about the shape, but the pizza base should be an even thickness.) Place on a tray in a damp, warm place for 1 hour.

2

Preheat oven to 350°F . Place a pizza stone or baking tray in oven to heat.

3

Place ricotta and 500g of crème pâtissière in a bowl and mix to combine. Spread over pizza base, leaving a 1cm border around edge. Top with berries. Transfer to hot pizza stone and bake for 35 minutes or 40 minutes if using a baking tray. Remove from oven. Drizzle with lemon juice and sprinkle with sugar. Enjoy warm, straight away.

4

TO MAKE THE PASTRY CREAM:

5

In a medium saucepan, heat the milk over medium-high heat until scalded; that is, until small bubbles form along the sides of the pan. While the milk is heating, in a small bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, and salt. (Mixing the flour with the sugar will prevent the flour from clumping when you add it to the egg yolks.) In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks until blended, then slowly whisk in the flour mixture. The mixture will be thick and pasty.

6

Remove the milk from the heat and slowly add it to the egg-flour mixture, a little at a time, while whisking constantly. When all of the milk has been incorporated, return the contents of the bowl to the saucepan and heat over medium heat; whisk continuously and vigorously, for about 3 minutes, or until the mixture thickens and comes to a boil. At first, the mixture will be very frothy and liquid; as it cooks longer, it will slowly start to thicken until the frothy bubbles disappear and it becomes more viscous. Once it thickens, stop whisking every few seconds to see if the mixture has come to a boil. If it has not, keep whisking vigorously. As soon as you see it bubbling, immediately go back to whisking for just 10 seconds, and then remove the pan from the heat. Boiling the mixture will thicken it and cook out the flour taste, but if you let it boil for longer than 10 seconds, the mixture can become grainy.

7

Pour, push, and scrape the mixture through the sieve into a small, heatproof bowl. Stir in the vanilla and then cover with plastic wrap, placing it directly on the surface of the cream to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or until cold, before using. The cream can be stored for up to 3 days in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Notes

The brioche recipe is adapted from Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread