How to Make Just One Loaf of Brioche Bread

Learn how to make a fresh loaf of buttery brioche bread, baked to perfection in a standard loaf pan.

This beginner-friendly, same-day brioche recipe can be done in just a few hours and makes just one loaf of brioche with a shiny golden brown crust and a slightly dense crumb that is so perfectly soft and sweet.

Enjoy slices of this homemade brioche loaf toasted with whipped honey butter and fresh fruit, transformed into sugary French toast, or used to make your favorite grilled cheese sandwiches.

If you're new to bread making, don't be intimidated by brioche bread. You'll need a stand mixer with a dough hook, but I've got all the detailed step-by-step tips, tricks, and visuals you need to feel confident making this enriched dough! You can do this!

Once you get the hang of this basic brioche, you'll feel confident moving on to more advanced versions like my chocolate chip brioche loaf recipe, the best gooey cinnamon rolls, or even deep-fried jelly-filled donuts!

Brioche is enriched with butter, sugar, and eggs

Brioche is a soft, sweet, buttery bread with a dense, even crumb. It is enriched with butter, eggs, milk, and sugar. This added fat and sugar is what gives brioche dough its soft, fluffy texture.

In a traditional brioche bread dough, butter is gradually kneaded into the dough after the dough has gone through an initial kneading stage during which the yeast starts working and the gluten network starts forming. Adding the butter during a secondary kneading stage allows the butter to coat the gluten network in the dough instead of getting in its way and preventing it from forming.

The added butter and sugar in an enriched dough like brioche lets it last much longer before going stale.

Within the world of brioche doughs the ratio of butter to flour can vary widely — a rich brioche can be as much as 75% butter by baker's percentage (the ratio of butter to flour in the recipe), while a leaner brioche might only be 25% butter.

The more butter the dough has, the richer it is, and the stickier it is to work with due to how quickly the butter melts from the heat of your hands.

My brioche recipe makes just one loaf

My issue with a lot of recipes for brioche bread loaves is that pesky little "-ves" at the end. Basically, most brioche recipes make more than one loaf of bread. And while I love brioche, I don't always want two loaves of it!

So when I set out to make a base version of my go-to brioche dough recipe, I wanted it to make just one loaf of bread. You can certainly double or triple it if you want, and I specifically designed the recipe so it's easy to scale up without getting into measurements of half-an-egg or whatever.

My other issue with a lot of brioche bread recipes is that they require a long, slow rise time. And while I have included notes in this recipe for how to do a slow, cold rise in the fridge, most of the time my ADHD gets the better of me and I don't plan far enough ahead.

So this brioche recipe has a relatively quick rise — about one hour after kneading and then another hour after you shape it, meaning the whole process can be done in about 3-4 hours start-to-finish. For an overnight rise, follow the instructions for the overnight rise in my brioche dinner rolls recipe.

With just 24% butter in the dough, my base brioche recipe makes a soft, pliant, and resilient dough that is really good at holding a lot of different shapes. You can braid it, twist it, roll it, knot it, etc.

Ingredient Notes

Here's what you'll need to make this soft and fluffy brioche bread loaf! See recipe card for quantities.

Whole Milk - The fat content in whole milk an important part of this enriched dough. If you use a reduced-fat or skim milk, you may find the dough is too sticky to knead and shape!

Instant Yeast - Instant yeast is sometimes also called "rapid rise," "quick rise," or "bread machine" yeast. If you use active dry yeast, the dough may just take a bit longer to rise.

Unsalted Butter - Make sure your butter is softened truly to room temperature. The colder and firmer your butter is, the longer it will take to incorporate into the dough.

Other Brioche Loaf Flavorings: You can add the zest of an orange or lemon to the dry ingredients, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract to the wet ingredients, up to 2 teaspoons ground spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, etc. to the dry ingredients. You can even use flavored herb compound butters (omit the salt) in place of plain unsalted butter, as long as you make sure the total weight of butter is the same as the recipe calls for.

Knead Brioche Dough in Two Stages

When mixing brioche dough, you start with everything except the butter. The butter is added after the dough has already been mixed and kneaded once; if you include it from the start, the butter would coat the other ingredients and make it harder for them to absorb the liquid from the milk and eggs.

1. Mix the dough - Whisk the dry ingredients together, then whisk the wet ingredients together (except for the butter) and pour them into the dry ingredients. Mix everything together on low speed with a dough hook until it comes together in one mass on the dough hook and there aren't any dry bits of flour left in the bottom.
2. Knead the dough - Increase the speed and mix on medium until the dough passes the "windowpane test" (see gifs below). You may need to slowly drizzle in an additional 1-2 teaspoons milk or dust in some flour to get the dough to be soft, smooth, and stretchy.
3. Add the butter - Add the soft, room temperature butter 1 tablespoon at a time, letting it fully incorporate between each addition. This can take up to 10 minutes, be patient.
4. Knead the dough - Once the butter has been added, knead the dough again on medium speed until it passes the "windowpane test" a second time. This can take another 5-7 minutes!

Each time you add a new piece of butter, the butter will smear all over the walls of the bowl and coat the outside of the dough. Your dough may fall apart a little bit and spit the butter out as it slides around in the bowl. The brioche dough might even fall off the dough hook completely. Just let the mixer keep running (or pause the mixer, gather the dough back into a ball, and then keep going) and it will come back together.

You're asking the gluten network to incorporate quite a lot of fat each time you add a new chunk of butter — be patient! At the end of each mixing stage, the dough will be slightly tacky to the touch, but should clear the sides of the bowl.

If the dough is super sticky, dust in more flour. If the dough is super dry, you may need to drizzle in a little more milk.

Passing the Windowpane Test

The "windowpane test" is a way of checking how well developed the gluten network in your dough is.

Tear off a tiny piece of dough, about the size of a grape. Coat it with flour and use your thumbs and fingers to gently press it into a flat shape from the center out.

When you can stretch it quite thin in the center without it tearing, you've passed the windowpane test.

NOTE: Even dough that passes the windowpane test will tear eventually if you keep stretching it. As long as you get the center thin enough to almost see light through before it tears, you're fine.

The First Rise (Bulk Fermentation)

Once the butter has been incorporated and the dough has passed the windowpane test, it's time to let it rest. It's been through a lot. Resting is important to give the yeast time to feed and the dough time to grow.

Shape the dough into a ball by tucking all the ends under and place it in a lightly greased bowl. Cover the mouth of the bowl and let it rise for about an hour at room temperature (around 72°F).

Kitchen temperature makes a big difference in how quickly your brioche rises. If your kitchen is cold (below 70°F), the butter will be more solid and the dough will rise slowly. If your kitchen is warm (above 75°F), the butter will be very warm and the dough will rise quickly.

It's more important that the dough looks and feels right than that a certain amount of time has passed. If the dough is ready a little before an hour or a little after an hour or if the dough needs another 30 minutes to rise, that's just fine.

Shaping A Brioche Loaf

There are a lot of different ways you can shape a brioche loaf. For this brioche bread, I decided to go with a pull-apart style loaf made of 8 small round balls of dough that join together in a loaf pan as they rise. While you can pull apart the segments and butter them or use them to make small sandwiches, I usually cut this brioche loaf into thick slices instead.

This brioche shaping method isn't just an aesthetic choice—it's also practical. Dividing and shaping the dough in smaller sections helps reduce air bubbles and gives the crumb inside the loaf a more even texture when it bakes.

Gently deflate the dough to press any giant air bubbles out of it, then turn it out onto a clean counter or work surface to shape.

While the first two shaping steps can be done on a very lightly floured surface, the final shaping step should be done on an unfloured surface. Flour prevents the dough from sticking and in the next step, we're relying on the friction between the dough and the counter to help create tension in the dough.

The Second Brioche Rise

Arrange the eight dough balls in four rows of two (or two rows of four, depending on how you're looking at your loaf pan) in a greased and lined loaf pan.

Sometimes brioche will develop air bubbles in the outer layer of dough — I usually pop these before I egg wash the dough. The egg wash seals them flat so you get a nice shiny top on your brioche loaf. It's really up to you if you want to keep them or pop them.

If you want to add any toppings to your brioche dough, like sesame seeds, Swedish pearl sugar, everything bagel seasoning, etc. now is the time to do so.

The brioche bread will be quite a dark golden brown on top when it's done. If you're worried about it getting too dark, you can tent it with foil during the final 10-15 minutes of baking. 

Let it cool in the pan for 15-20 minutes, then remove to a rack to finish cooling completely. If you slice it before it's cool the inside will turn gummy. It really is best to let it cool all the way!

Important: Brioche and Temperature

In baking, "room temperature" is generally somewhere around 70-75°F.

Depending on the temperature of your kitchen, and the temperature of your milk and egg, your dough may rise faster or slower, and your dough may reach windowpane stage faster or slower.

Due to the extra weight of the butter on the gluten network, don't worry if your dough needs up to an extra hour of time to rise, especially if your kitchen is cold.

In the case of brioche dough, which has a lot of butter in it, warmer temperatures (even just the warmth from your hands) make the dough sticker and harder to handle. Dust the dough lightly with flour as needed to prevent sticking. Or pop the dough in the fridge for 10-15 minutes to help the butter firm up before shaping.

Just because your dough isn’t ready at the time estimates given in the recipe, that doesn’t mean it's not working — there might be other temperature factors affecting how quickly or slowly it gets there!

Getting the dough to reach the right stages and look and feel right is more important than nailing the timing.

Equipment Notes — Use a Stand Mixer!

You need a stand mixer with a dough hook to make this recipe. You cannot make brioche bread with a hand mixer. And while it's possible to make by hand, it's very hard. I don't recommend it.

If you have a KitchenAid mixer with the tilt head and the bowl that screws in at the base, the motor may struggle with this dough — keep a close eye on it. You may need to hold the bowl in place to make sure it doesn’t unscrew during the kneading process.

If you have a bowl-lift model, still keep an eye on it the whole time it's mixing and kneading. You don't want the mixer to walk itself off the counter!

If your mixer’s motor feels like it’s overheating, you can pause for 5 minutes and then resume mixing.

Practical Tips & Recipe Notes

• If you don't reach a perfect windowpane before adding the butter and it's been at least 10 minutes of kneading that's okay — you can go ahead and start adding butter. It won't be a technically perfect brioche, but it will still be delicious!
• If the butter chunks are struggling to incorporate, lightly dust in ¼ teaspoon of flour — it will help the butter cling to the dough. Resist adding more flour unless absolutely needed!
• Some of my recipe testers said their dough doubled in size in an hour, others said it took closer to two hours. Be patient!
• If your dough looks like it has a tear along the side after it comes out of the oven then it was likely underproofed before baking. When you bake underproofed brioche, the crust sets in place on the outside before the dough inside has finished expanding, causing a torn texture along one or both sides of the loaf around the rim of the pan. It will still be delicious!

📖 Recipe