Well-made brioche is something of a miracle: Despite being laden with butter and eggs, it manages to avoid the density of a pound cake and turn out incredibly light and airy. But achieving these results is a balancing act—and a tricky one at that. Traditionally, making a rich dough like brioche means kneading all of the ingredients to develop gluten—except butter. Softened butter is added tablespoon by tablespoon only after the mixture begins to develop into dough. This long process is important: If the butter isn't added slowly, the dough can bread into a greasy mess. We decided to ditch tradition and use a "no-knead" technique, which also solved our tricky butter problem. In a no-knead approach, the dough (which must be very wet) sits for a long time, stitching itself together to form gluten—all without any help from a mixer. With kneading out of the equation, we are able to melt the butter and add it all at one—a faster and far less demanding approach.