Breadzilla!! Or, Dear God! Did I Add Too Much Yeast?

After looking through the storage shed (see previous post on opening locks) and finding my journal from this past summer in Provence, I was reminded of something that I will never forget; eating goat cheese fougasse in an open-air market in Aix-en-Provence. I thought it would be nice to recreate this heavenly bread, and so the recipe search began. After many blog/recipe/cooking sites later, I determined that what we had was not fougasse. This was a soft, sweet bread, while fougasse is a hearth-style, crusty and savory bread.

I decided to improvise. Working in a French cafe for a year or so in early college left me with a keen taste of different french breads. I decided that the "fougasse" that we had had was more of a brioche, studded with chunks of creamy, stinky cheese. Coupled with a ripe, juicy peach? Dear God, the thought brings a tear to my eye.

Today I made braided brioche, with Roquefort cheese stuck in the cracks. It was fine at first, but the seemingly over-active yeast made me dub my creation "Breadzilla", as I had visions of the rising beast bursting from my oven onto the unsuspecting city below.

Regardless of how much it rose, it was unbelievable. Certainly different from what I remember tasting beneath the soleil Provencal (but really, could anything ever be that good again?) yet still delicious in its own right.

A truly gorgeous braided brioche, peppered with Roquefort, ready to rise for a second time:



And a shot from the oven monstrosity, ready to rise into oblivion:



And finally, the end product, barely able to squeeze onto a cookie sheet:



Bonus:

Aix market where said "fougasse" was bought and consumed: