The Fresh Loaf

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Sourdough Chocolate Marble Loaf - MUST. LAMINATE. CAN'T. STOP.

txfarmer's picture
txfarmer

Sourdough Chocolate Marble Loaf - MUST. LAMINATE. CAN'T. STOP.

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

Click here for my blog index.

In reply to my soft chocolate sandwich loaf post, lumos tossed me a bone, and I took the bait immediatly. Hey, it involves chocolate and lamination, two of my many bread related obsessions. Essesntially it's a technique popoular in Japan a while ago: a sheet of chocolate laminated into an enriched soft dough, displaying random but cool looking marble effect, and a subtle chocolate taste. You can use ANY lightly enriched dough for this, I used the classic Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Loaf, but any of the following would work as well (click for detailed formulas):

Some notes:

- It's still a soft shreddy bread, so you still have to do the intensive kneading required, no shortcuts here.

- Use the same dough/flour amount as a normal sandwich loaf. For my Chinese pullman loaf pan, I used 250g of total flour just like the Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Loaf post specifies, for a 8X4inch loaf tin, you can either increase the flour amount to 280g or leave it at 250g, depending on how tall you want the loaf to be.

- I got the chocolate sheet recipe online, but later lumos sent me a very similar one, thanks!

Sourdough Chocoate Marble Loaf

- Chocolate sheet
Dark chocolate, 50g
butter, 20g
bread flour, 20g
cocoa powder, 10g
corn starch, 5g
milk, 60g
sugar, 20g
egg white, one

1. Melt chocolate and butter seperately
2. Mix and shift bread flour/corn starch/cocoa, add milk and sugar, mix until blend
3. Add melted chocolate then melted butter, mix thoroughly
4. Put on low heat, stir constantly, until the mixture thickens and clears the side and bottom of the pot.


5. Put the mixture between two sheets of plastic, roll to a 18CMX18CM square, freeze until use.



- Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Loaf dough enough for your tin (or similar soft white enriched dough), after first rise and put in fridge overnight.

- Assembling:

1. Take the dough out of fridge, press flat, let rest at room temp for one hour.
2. Roll out to 25X25CM square, put the frozen chocolate sheet in the middle

3. Seal the chocolate sheet in, roll out again to 18X36CM, do a single book fold (i.e. fold in thirds, envelope fold, three-fold)

4. Roll out to 18X36CM and do the single book fold again (may need to rest dough for 10-20min before rolling out )
5. Roll out to 18X36CM and do the single book fold for the third time (may need to rest dough for 10-20min before rolling out )
6. Rest dough for 20min, roll out to be slightly longer and wider than the loaf tin, cut in 3 stripes with one end connected

7. Braid and put in oiled loaf tin

8. Proof and bake as the original dough formula requires, in this case it took 6.5 hours to proof, and 40min at 375min to bake.

 

Marble effect inside out

 

Do note that this is not a dessert-like sweet bread, it's a typical Asian soft loaf - slightly sweet, shreddably soft, with subtle chocolate flavors.

Oh yeah, it's A LOT easier than making croissants, the chocolate sheet is not easy to melt.

Comments

lumos's picture
lumos

::grins::

Thank you for sharing the detailed method and photos.

 

Oh, btw.....it doesn't have to be chocolate, you know, the sheet to fold in.  Not that I'm suggesting anything but.....:p

 

::goes to look for more bones::

 

txfarmer's picture
txfarmer

So far I am thinking Matcha, Red Bean, Sesame, pesto, etc etc....

lumos's picture
lumos

::grin:: No.2

hehehe I thought you'd be on new ideas already.  They all sounds good!  When you use sesami, make sure it's black one...though I'm sure I don't have to remind you.;)  Another option is mix some cocoa powder or instant coffee granules into dough to make it dark and laminate with white chocolate...... I can almost hear you brain's ticking already with even more new wild ideas....:p

Just to give you some idea for more options, these are the ready made sheets you can buy in Japan for this purpose. The page is already translated into English using Google Translater, so naturally, some translation are weird.... ( for example 'pan' is actually 'bread' in Japanese. They call this product 'pan sheet = bread sheet' over there) If you click the pictures, it'll take you to the page with more detailed description of each sheet with the actual colour in the packet.

lumos

dablues's picture
dablues

When clicking on the links in your post it comes back to your original post.  Don't know if it's my browser acting up or not.

txfarmer's picture
txfarmer

I fixed those, thanks for pointing it out.

EvaB's picture
EvaB

being printed out as we type, and will just have to try it out! LOL May be awhile until I actually get a bread that bakes, to try it with, but its in the list.

I am finally caught up on the 4 months worth of posts I was behind on, and that took a solid month of working one or two a day to get through. These last days posts are finally done, I had five days worth this mroning, and now after hours of work, am down to one day, today! Yay!

But have been following the chocolate bread oddisy and am intrigued enough to print the recipes off, now to sort out and put into books the whole lot I've printed in the last while! ARG! that will probably wait until cold weather as we have to do some stuff outside yet.

grind's picture
grind

Looks amazing.  How about with cheese?  Another bone tossed your way (wink).

Mitsuko's picture
Mitsuko

so,perhaps because of all txfarmers works and recipes on here, ive been going through a lamination obsession. i had great success with the cheese danish recipe and croissants so Decided try this out. my chocolate layers became somewhat grainy in texture. Not smooth ribbons as I'm used to from Japanese packaged goods. -- Maybe it was my chocolate. I tried it again, new chocolate. Same technique.  i used yeasted milk bread the second go around... I wanted to try and master this and didn't want to wait for sourdough. Anyway, same thing happened. What could I be doing wrong? the insides are perfectly edible and look closer to smooth. But the texture doesn't seem right to me. The presentation of the loaves is incredible though. I don't think I've ever produced a more stunning looking loaf. So thank you so much txfarmer on your post with the formula and precise instructions!