Lemon Cheese Brioche

***Edited with additional instructions per requests from readers on 1.31.2012. Thank you!

Before we proceed, go check out my guest post at The Chatty Housewife's! She's featuring my favorite five today.

 I occasionally joke that this is the recipe my husband married me for. It's pretty good.

<<< So, first off, let me apologize for the photography in this post. Someday, I may have to post it again with good photography, ha. The photography IN NO WAY does justice to this treat. I've been taking pictures since last August to share this recipe, and the lighting is always wrong, the shadows are always wrong, and I always forget to take pictures of important things when I do it, like, for example, a sliced piece of this amazing pastry. However, I've promised this recipe to approximately 8 different people now, and I don't have the ingredients or the time to whip up another one real fast, so the blog post is going up, poor photography or not. You'll note that some of the photos are from my Wenatchee kitchen at like 10pm, ha, and some are from this kitchen--which is wreaking havoc on my food photography altogether, thanks to shadows, and florescent lights.>>>

I've actually made some variation of this recipe since I was about 12 years old or so... it's gone through various mutations over time, with different bread recipes, and variations on the filling. I happen to think that it's perfect just the way it is now. The original recipe had frosting on it, and a different sweet bread... I think it's too sweet with frosting, although you could certainly add it if you liked. And this Brioche recipe is amazing. Most of the time Brioche is made with copious amounts of butter, but this is a butter-free recipe that manages to be light and flaky and rich, and really shines with the creamy lemony goodness inside. If you had lemon haters, I really do think you could make it without lemon. Maybe vanilla instead? We LOVE lemon here, so that probably won't ever happen at our house, but I'd be interested to hear if someone else tries it without lemon.

 This is where I originally got the Brioche recipe from. 

Side note: If you make this Brioche (without the lemon cheese filling, to be clear) in a loaf pan just like a loaf of bread, and then use this recipe for French Toast, your family will love you forever and beg you for this recipe OFTEN. Trust me when I say you should just go ahead and double it. You can also roll it out and put cinnamon and sugar on it, and then roll it into a loaf, but honestly it's so good without that I never bother. This also proves that I watch Diner's, Drive-in's and Dives a bit too much. It's just that those are my most favorite types of restaurants. :-)

Without further ado, here's my version of the brioche, and my procedure for getting this particular amazing product out of it:

(All total I'd say this takes about 2.5 casual hours to make--as each bit of action gets done fairly quickly the time is mostly spent waiting for it to rise.)

Lemon Cheese Brioche

BRIOCHE:
1 TBSP Active Dry Yeast
1.5 cups warm milk
1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 TBSP
2 TBSP Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 Egg Yolks
4.5 to 5 cups AP Flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 Egg White

Dissolve yeast in warm milk with 1 TBSP sugar (from the 1/2 cup) and olive oil. Set aside 10 Minutes.

Whisk in egg yolks, 1 cup flour, the rest of the 1/2 cup sugar and salt. Let rise for one hour.

CREAM CHEESE FILLING:
Meanwhile beat together:
1 8oz. package cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar (granulated works just fine too.)
1/4 cup lemon juice

(Normally I am a fresh lemon only girl. However, I happen to think that the more mild lemon flavor of the bottled lemon juice suits this recipe a little better than fresh. If you really wanted to go nuts though, you can definitely use fresh lemon, and zest too. Sometimes when I'm craving over the top lemon flavor, I'll do that as well.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

After your Brioche batter has risen for one hour, add the remaining flour and knead until flour is worked in, and it's not sticky anymore. Let rest a few minutes, and then roll out into a rectangle on a floured surface. I usually roll it out to slightly bigger than the cookie sheet it's going to end up on--maybe about 1.3 of an inch thick all around? Spread the cream cheese mixture in the center of the rectangle, long ways, as seen in the photo, with plenty of room for your braids to wrap completely over it.

Using your knife, cut strips into the sides of the rectangle, towards the cream cheese. (not quite too it, however, because you don't want too much cream cheese to leak out while baking.) Fold the strips up, alternating sides. It's generally best to start on opposite ends and work towards the middle.

Carefully (I use a spatula and the full length of my (scrubbed) arm.) Lift the Lemon Cheese Brioche onto a greased cookie sheet. Don't stress it too much. Just get it on there, best you can, any falling apart is easily adjusted once it's on the cookie sheet. I usually stretch it out as big and wide as possible on the cookie sheet, so I have as much of it as possible when it is baked. :-)

Mix together your remaining 1 TBSP of sugar and 1 egg white. Brush the cheese bread with this mixture, generously. It's going to sparkle and shine when it comes out of the oven.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 18 minutes. I usually start checking it at 15 and tent it with tin foil if need be to keep it from getting too brown. Do be careful to not under-bake it though, unless you like slightly under-baked bread dough. :-)

 I usually slice it width and length-wise so the pieces are a little bit easier to wrangle into your mouth. It's delicious both warm and cold, and actually makes ahead and freezes very well, since the cream cheese is baked. It is beautiful whole, as well. If I wasn't always so desperate to eat it, It'd hurt me a little to cut into it. Haha.

 Enjoy! I hope your family loves it as much as mine! I find it's best to make it only when company is coming over, or I can take it somewhere to share, because otherwise we will eat the whole thing in short order. :-)

Scraping the baking sheet and eating it all is HIGHLY recommended. :-)