It's bread, but chocolatey

A while back, on a whim, I bought a copy of The Baker. I bought it almost entirely because it's absolutely filled with lovely photos of the baked delights contained within the covers. As a result, it's a gorgeous book and a joy just to flick through. I bought it at the same time that I'd bought the bread handbook, and I'd not baked anything from it yet. But when looking through it, one recipe in particular caught my eye: Chocolate Bread. And yes, it's exactly what it sounds like - bread, but chocolatey - so I had to give it a go. It just happened that Anita coming to visit presented the perfect opportunity!

Chocolate Bread
Ingredients

• 50g Butter
• 185g Dark chocolate
• 1 Egg
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
• 55g Caster sugar
• 375g Strong flour
• 30g Cocoa powder
• 1 sachet Fast-action powdered yeast
• Milk

Method

1. Melt the butter and half of the chocolate over a double boiler.
2. Remove from the heat and beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
3. Add to the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, yeast) and form a dough, adding enough milk to form a dough.
4. Knead for 10 minutes and return to a clean, oiled mixing bowl. Cover and leave to rise for around 1 1/2 hours until doubled in size.
5. Knock the dough back and press out into a rectangle roughly 1cm thick.
6. Chop the remaining chocolate and sprinkle over the dough.
7. Roll the dough into a log and transfer to a greased baking tray. Cover with a damp tea towel and allow to prove for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
8. Bake at 180C/Gas Mark 4 for 45-50 minutes.

Anita kneading the dough. Actually, Anita really did most of the work baking this...
The kneaded dough ready for rising (step 4).And straight from the oven (yes, it's somewhat burnt - that was my fault).Anita cutting the finished bread. Everyone should have a glamourous assistant!So what was it like? The crust was burnt, but that was stupidity on my part ("it looks really good, but let's give it 10 minutes more..."). We also didn't have any strong flour so we used plain flour which may have affected the texture somewhat and it seemed not really to rise when we left it, but actually, it still ended up pretty well! It was really was like chocolatey bread (duh!), but in a really good way. Not too sweet (actually, not very sweet at all), but definitely not savoury. The book suggested eating it with sweetened marscapone, which I think would work really well. But a definite success. I think I'll have to bake it again using strong flour and hopefully see what it's like when it's not burnt on the outside...