BBA Challenge Bread #4 Brioche

Should we make the Rich Man's Brioche??  The Middle-Class Brioche?? Tiny molds?  Larger molds--which we didn't have?  Or should we just use loaf pans, which we both had?  There were some decisions to make with this BBA Challenge.  We decided that Karen would make the Rich Man's Brioche and I would make the Middle-Class and we would compare the two.  I already had one pan that I thought would work for a larger brioche and we ordered more pans.  Mine were 7-inch and hers were 8-inch.  Both sizes seemed to work just fine.  This recipe kept me on  my toes as I kept switching between the quantities for the middle-class version and the general directions on the previous page.  I almost panicked when I noticed I had forgotten the little note on bottom of page 127, "proceed as for Rich Man's Brioche, extending the fermentation for the sponge to 30 to 45 minutes."  I also missed the little note about allowing the dough to rest 5 minutes before adding the butter.  It still all worked out just fine.  The bread rose (Peter Reinhart would be happy) and the outcome was delicious.    Karen's bread seemed impossibly buttery to her when she was working with it but it did what it should do.  She said it made really delicious french toast. 

Today we compared them.  They were quite different from each other.  The Rich Man's Brioche was very rich and buttery and had the most interesting texture.  The Middle-Class Brioche seemed perfect for just bread or little individual rolls.  Karen brought in some fig jam and I had some of my applebutter--both were so good on our brioche.