Artificial Food Coloring Free Bread Machine Brioche
Rich, pillowy, and impossibly tender, this brioche is the kind of bread that makes you wonder why you ever bought a loaf from the store. The ingredient list is refreshingly straightforward — whole milk, eggs, real butter, bread flour, sugar, salt, and yeast — with absolutely nothing artificial hiding in the mix. That matters more than you might think, since many commercial brioche and enriched breads sneak in dyes or synthetic additives to achieve that picture-perfect golden color. Here, the deep chestnut crust comes entirely from a simple egg yolk and milk wash, and the oven does the rest. The bread machine handles the hardest part — the long, buttery knead — so you're mostly just waiting for that gorgeous dough to rise and proof before it goes into the oven. Three dough balls nestled into a loaf pan give you that classic pull-apart crown, and the crumb inside is soft, slightly sweet, and rich without being heavy. Slice it thick for French toast, serve it alongside a weekend brunch spread, or honestly just eat it warm with a little butter — it needs nothing else.
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Learn more →Ingredients
12 servings
For the dough
- ¼ cup whole milk, warmed to 95–100°f (35–38°c)
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 tsp fine sea salt
- 3 cups bread flour
- 2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast (1 standard packet)
- 10 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes, softened
For the egg wash
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp whole milk
Instructions
- 1
Add the ingredients to the bread machine pan in the order your machine's manual specifies (typically liquids first, then dry ingredients, with yeast last and kept away from the salt). Add the warmed milk, then the 3 eggs, sugar, and salt. Add the bread flour on top, then make a small well in the center of the flour and add the yeast.
- 2
Select the Dough cycle on your bread machine and start it. Once the machine has been kneading for about 5 minutes and a shaggy dough has formed, begin adding the softened butter cubes a few at a time through the lid opening, waiting about 30 seconds between additions. The dough will look rough and greasy at first — continue until all the butter is incorporated and the dough is smooth, supple, and pulls away cleanly from the sides of the pan, about 10–12 minutes into the knead cycle.
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