Eggs Benedict and Brioche. October 2011.

Eggs Benedict served with a side of browned potatoes.

Delicious.

The Hollandaise Sauce I prepared for our eggs Benedict is finished with Dijon mustard and lots of Tabasco. 

Here goes the process of making it:

Start with fresh grade AA eggs. This way they will not break as easily.

In a stainless steel round bowl, whisk your egg yolks with a touch of acid (usually white vinegar and lemon juice), salt and seasoning of your preference.

Now, place your bowl over steaming water whisk your yolks until it becomes like a thick paste. Remove from the heat and start adding your warm, but not hot clarified butter, little by little, always whisking.

If it starts becoming to thick, add a bit more acid, like a few drops of lemon juice or if it is already too acid add a few drops of water. 

Continue adding your clarified butter until it becomes totally emulsified, to a consistency you feel is good. Now flavor it as you wish.

Hint: since the mixture of butter and egg yolk tastes very rich and fatty, I find it very relieving to add something citric and something spicy to this mix. It complements the flavor by balancing the fat. 

Post Scriptum: If the eggs break you can fix them adding a bit more water (1 tsp) or two new egg yolks and whisking them together.

On this delicious English Muffin recipe we used Compressed Yeast and Baking Powder. 

With the compressed yeast you make a sponge and then add the rest of the ingredients. 

Here goes the method: 

Warm up the milk to 75 degrees F. mix in the compressed yeast and a bit of pastry flour and let this sponge ferment for 15 minutes. 

Now add  the remaining pastry, bread flour and baking powder. Mix. 

Now lightly mix this dough with the sugar, salt, butter, and water, just enough to moisten the ingredients. Mix it a touch more on higher speed.

Cover the dough and, let it rest for 20 minutes. On this bulk fermentation, it will grown. Punch it down to give the yeast some new food and to equalize the temperature of the dough. Now let it rest for another 10 minutes.

Roll it out to a 1 inch thickness, cut it in circles or squares. 

Place it on a cornmeal dusted sheet pan and proof it on a moistened environment for 30 minutes. 

While proofing it, don't forget to place a small steaming pot of water inside proof box or in a moist environment and spray the dough before closing the proof box. This will avoid the outer part of the dough from drying out and enable the dough to grow to its fullest potential.

When you pinch the dough with your finger and it does not bounce back it is done proofing.

Now bake it on a lightly greased griddle at medium heat until golden. Flip it over with a pancake spatula so that both sides get golden.

Our English muffin production.

When cooking your eggs for your Eggs Benedict you will be using a poaching method. As soon as they come out from your warm water you should serve them immediately or hold them in ice water (so that they don't carry over cooking) until service time. 

Here goes a basic procedure for poaching your eggs: 

First, use the freshest eggs possible. 

How to know if your eggs is good? When you break it into a bowl, it should have a tall, dark yellow yolk with a small egg white and a smaller thicker transparent egg white ring around the yolk. 

Usually the bigger and taller the yolk and the smaller the white, the better the quality of your egg. 

As an egg gets older, it dehydrates and the egg yolk becomes smaller and the egg white becomes bigger and thinner. 

Old eggs are not the best eggs for poaching, they break a lot easier and they are not as tasty and satisfying when served in Eggs Benedict, where the egg is the main ingredient.

Continuing the procedure for poaching your eggs: 

In a big pot of simmering water, add a bit of distilled vinegar (1/2 tsp or 1 tsp per qt of water) and a touch of salt. 

This will help your egg whites coagulate without breaking. Swirl your water and add your eggs, one by one. The movement of the water will help your eggs not set to the bottom while still raw.

Simmer them for about 4 minutes, until the whites coagulate. Now remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and serve them immediately. 

This was one of the brioches we made earlier. It was literally the size of a soccer ball. We used it the following day to make a pizza type of Hors D'euvres.

Waiting a day is not the best idea for Brioche, especially in Colorado. It got a bit dry.