Barley Free Bread Machine Brioche
Rich, pillowy, and impossibly tender, this brioche is the kind of bread that makes you feel like a serious baker the moment you pull it from the oven. The bread machine does the heavy lifting on the kneading, which is genuinely important here — working all that butter into the dough properly is what gives brioche its signature soft, feathery crumb, and the machine handles it with zero fuss. Every ingredient in this recipe is straightforward and naturally free from barley, so there's no need to scrutinize labels or worry about hidden grains sneaking in through malt, barley flour, or grain-based additives the way you might with a store-bought enriched loaf. The dough comes together with bread flour, eggs, butter, and a touch of sugar, then gets shaped into three smooth balls that bake up into a gorgeous, domed loaf with a deep chestnut crust. That egg wash finish is a small step that makes a huge visual difference — glossy, bakery-worthy, and honestly a little show-stopping. Let it cool before you slice it, as hard as that is, because the crumb needs that time to fully set and reach its best texture.
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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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