Steamed brioche with rose-scented mozzarella

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                                             'Brioche al vapour de mozzarella al perfume
                                                                 de rosas'

So where to start? Well as luck would have it I have taken my bread-making to the next level by beginning my own sourdough starter courtesy of a recipe from Phil Howard's book 'The Square-Sweet' which, by the way, is a fantastic read as the savoury version. Basically remember those silly little Japanese pet toys that were big around the late 90's, Tamagotchi's? Yeah those, this is kind of like that but slightly less gay in the sense that you have to treat your starter as a pet by feeding it and looking after its general wellbeing.



Sourdough starter

By combining a starting dough of natural yogurt, flour and warm water and leaving it in a sealed container in a warm place for damn near three days feeding it from time to time you get a natural yeast fermentation that sits in the fridge and benefits from being fed flour and warm water from time to time. Fortunately this recipe involves a sourdough starter, no doubt to give depth of flavour and added lightness to the brioche.

Brioche first stage mixing

I began this recipe of small pillows of brioche topped with mozzarella and rose flavoured air by making the brioche. Combining flour, the starter, yeast, milk, sugar and salt to a mixer plus three medium beaten eggs produced an elastic dough, the addition of butter made for a smooth silky brioche dough which was then covered and chilled in the fridge for 12 hours.




More mixing....

Mixing complete!

After 12 hours you have a firm, risen brioche dough. The next step is to take 200g of it (I used the excess to make a loaf of brioche) and roll it out into a sausage shape and cut 12g portions out of the log, similar to large gnocchi. Once cut the dough has to be shaped into golf ball-sized rounds and placed on a tray to sit for 30 minutes.



A brioche sausage



The finished brioche balls

Placing the brioches into the oven set to 32C for three hours allows fermentation to occur.

Opening the oven door expecting to find small golf ball sized brioches the sight that met me was a little surprising, the dough had risen to the size of a char-siu pork bun but luckily all were uniform in shape and size. Adria's intention was becoming clearer, this was a play on a steamed bun from Chinese or Japanese cuisine as many of his dishes carry inspiration from.



Aerated Milk

Buns pre-steaming

16 minutes in the steamer allowed the buns to cook and in the meantime I crumbled up the mozzarella seasoning lightly with salt and pepper and combined milk, soy lecithin and rose water. Be very careful with rose water, a couple of drops extra of this powerful stuff will leave your buns tasting like little bars of soap.

A quick tour under a hot grill followed by the assembly job and all was ready to serve.




The final dish

Biting into these resembles a steamed Chinese bun but the flavour is nothing like I've ever tasted before. Mozzarella and rose is a delicate combination, too much seasoning or too much rose water would render this dish inedible. Thankfully I was pleased with my efforts and both parties enjoyed it, again the mouth feel comes into play with the mozzarella base and air still cold yet the grilled top and the bun itself is hot. Another clever dish, I'm starting to like this Adria fellow....