Soph is running her first half marathon tomorrow, and we’re going for a picnic in Hyde Park afterwards, where’s she’s going to need to replenish all those calories she’s burnt running 13 miles! So I’m making the savoury brioche crown again, plus a sweet one with apricot and marzipan based one this recipe.

With the savoury crown I reduced the recipe down to 3/4 of the original, as the 500g flour version was just too big on the baking sheet I found. So it’s:

• 375g white bread flour
• 7.5g salt
• 7.5 instant yeast
• 128ml milk
• 3 medium eggs
• 180g unsalted butter

Everything but the butter goes in the mixer and gets mixed together.

The butter then gets added pice by piece, letting each combine before the next is added, then mixes for another 5 minutes after that.

Once finished you’ve got a very sticky dough that you certainly wouldn’t want to try kneading by hand!

This then goes to rise until it doubles in size, which took took hours today as it’s not hot, but not cold enough for the radiators to come on.

After rising it gets rolled out into a rectangle.

This gets topped with prosciutto ham, torn mozzarella, torn basil leaves (from the garden!) and toasted, crushed pine nuts.

This then gets rolled lengthways from each side and cut down the middle to give two logs, which then gets twisted together. Unfortunately that’s really hard to take photos of while doing… so here’s what it looks like after it proved for about 1.5 hours.

This gets an eggs wash then covered in grated parmesan.

This went in the oven at 200c fan for 25 minutes, then gets cooled on a rack.

Once cooled it comes off the baking sheet, and the middle gets cleaned up ready for the picnic.

For the sweet crown it starts with a similar dough mix, but only 250g of flour:

• 250g white bread flour
• 50g butter
• 1 large egg
• 150ml milk
• 10g instant yeast

This all gets added at once to the mixer.

As with the savoury one you get a very wet dough.

While this rises for about 1.5 hours I made the filling. I’d had dried apricots soaking in freshly squeezed orange juice over night. These got dried and chopped and added to raisins, walnuts, orange zest and some flour. Butter and sugar are creamed and added to finish the mix.

Separately I made some marzipan using 100g ground almonds, 50g golden caster sugar, 50g icing sugar, with egg, lemon juice and almond liqueur.

I just dolloped the marzipan and  fruit mix on the rolled out dough, rather than rolling out the marzipan. This then gets twisted into a crown just like the savoury one and proves for about 1.5 hours.

This cooks for 30mins at 180c fan.

As soon as it comes out it gets a melted apricot jam glaze.

Once it’s fully cooled it gets drizzled with water icing.

UPDATE: The savoury crown was just as intended: none of the excess moistness from excess olive oil in pesto, and the smaller size is still plenty while really retaining the crown shape,  and still tasting great.

The sweet one was, as expected, really sticky and gooey, and that/s exactly what was needed! It tasted great, almost like a lardy cake!