Brie in Brioche - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - 95th installment. The recipe is Brie in Brioche.

Wow - what a blow-out recipe :-)  Finally got to this in January, and it was definitely delicious and had some unique techniques along the way.   This recipe isn't a ton of work, but does need advanced planning, as there are various chilling steps of multiple hours.

An entire wheel of Brie is topped with super-carmelized sweet onions, and the entire thing wrapped in brioche dough and baked.  The recipe makes 16-20 servings (!!), and given that we weren't having a party, we were snacking on this for days, extending the holiday eating period by an additional week 
:-)

Carmelized onions after pressing in the colander

The onions are carmelized by cooking 6 whole large sweet onions with a stick of butter in the slow cooker on low for 24 (!!!!) hours.   They turned an amazing color, and the fragrance in the house was pretty incredible.  Once they've cooled, you weight them in a colander to extract any remaining liquid. These flattened onions are sliced in half horizontally in preparation for assembly.

The brioche dough recipe is designed for a bread machine (which we have), so that was incredibly easy - put the ingredients in the machine, set for "Dough", and then a quick check to be sure it's the right consistency after mixing.   You could certainly make this dough by hand or in the power mixer.  Once the dough has gone through its initial rise, it needs to be chilled for at least 24 hours.
Finally, it's time to assemble.  You line a 9" springform pan with part of the dough, put the cheese wheel on top of it, top with the onion slices, and then cover in more dough, tucking in the sides to close off the cylinder.  One last piece of dough is used to make a braid for decorating the top.
The assembled creation is brushed with egg wash and left to raise for 40 minutes before baking for a total of 45 minutes.
It is served in slices -  here's one of ours.  


The cheese oozes out, so it's not necessarily beautiful, but delicious - the combination of butter brioche dough, sweet onions, and melted Brie is wonderful.