Banana and Nutella Brioche

Week 35, Bake 35.

This week is my last week at my parents B&B until I head back to Somerset and my lovely job. And its been rather hot... Still even though the heat is annoying my mind hasn't stopped thinking about bake ideas, it is fair to say that I am rather obsessed now by baking. When I was 14 years old and was thinking about becoming a chef, I used to bake me and my mum a Nutella and Banana bread which was lovely, but since deciding that I wanted to become a Speech and Language Therapist instead that recipe has fallen by the wayside. So as this is my year of baking I decided to create a new one using a brioche recipe from The Great British Bake Off book. At this stage I should say that Brioche dough is a funny one and so I did spend a lot of my morning getting grumpy at it, but thankfully it turned out great.

Ingredients:

• 375g of strong white bread flour
• 1 teaspoon of sea salt
• 1 tablespoon of caster sugar
• 1 x 7g sachet of fast action dried yeast
• 4 tablespoons of milk
• 4 large eggs
• 175g of diced butter
• 1 banana
• 2 tablespoons of nutella
• 1 egg beaten to glaze.
  

Ingredients:

1. Put the flour, salt, sugar and yeast into a bowl and mix together.
2. Make a well and pour the milk into it and add the eggs.
   
3. Now, using your hands mix all the ingredients well together until you get a sticky dough.
4. Turn out onto a floured worktop and knead for 10 minutes. The dough will be very sticky so be prepared to use a lot of flour but there is a delicate balancing act as you don't want to use too much and then the dough become dry.
5. Knead until it is elasticated and becomes smooth.
   
6. Now, pop it back into the bowl, place some loose oiled cling film over the top and let it rise. Put it in the fridge to do so as you want a slow rise and let it double in size for 1-2 hours.
   
7. Punch the dough down, re-cover and then let it rise again for another hour.
8. Make the nutella-banana filling by mushing up the banana and nutella together.
9. Line a loaf tin.
10. Roll out the dough to just bigger in width than your loaf tin and then smear the Nutella mixture around the dough leaving about a 2cm edge free.
    
11. Like you would do with a Swiss roll, roll the brioche up and then place it into the tin so the seam faces the bottom of the tin.
    
12. Now let it once again double in size, but this time not in the fridge. This should take an hour.
    
13. Pre-heat the oven to 200c. Once it is ready, cook in the oven for 20 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 180c and cook for a further 10 minutes.
    
14. Remove from the oven and tin. Tap its bottom to see if it has a hollow sound, if it does then it is done.
    
15. Serve warm.