Chocolate Sourdough
JR posted his Chocolate Sourdough bread and it inspired me to give it a try. Two changes were made. The salt was reduced to 1.8% and 3% honey was added.
The chocolate paste tasted very bitter, so just enough honey was added to offset the bitter. But not enough to make the bread noticeably sweet.
The hydration (counting the water in the chocolate paste) was 93.8%. In spite of this the dough was quite easy to handle and shape. The chocolate paste offset the high hydration. The color, crumb, and oven spring were nice.
BUT - the flavor did not thrill my taste buds. Even though the starter was not highly acidic, IMO the sourdough didn’t pair well with the chocolate. Should this bread be attempted again either commercial yeast or Yeast Water would be used to leaven instead of SD.
A beautiful bread with a super soft texture. Too bad the flavor was off.
A Thought
How about a Chocolate - Chocolate Babka?
Mix this dough with CY and use Nutella for the filling. Maybe reduce the percentage of chocolate powder and increase the honey?
Comments
Wow Danny! That’s amazing! Sorry to hear that you didn’t like the flavour, the family normally devour the loaf with either butter or Nutella which hides the bitterness. But on it’s own, bitterness is too much at the end of every chew. But thank you!!
The other thing that can be done is having inclusions and a plain dough.. like what I did before having a chocolate dough with nuts and for the white dough to have chocolate chips..
we’ll keep experimenting... Thanks for trying it out...
Carlo
Danny, for the guy who used to say he had problems with getting ears, you certainly got quite an amazing ear and hug bloom on those loaves. I forget but did you use alkalinized cocoa powder or non alkalinized? I wonder if using alkalinized would balance the flavour better rather than non-alkalinized which would be more acidic I assume? Also using a much higher amount of honey as well. I was thinking of trying something like this but with soaked dried cherries and hazelnuts but would like some sweetness from the bread.
Benny, I used Valrhona Chocolate powder which is Dutched. I plan to give the bread to my neighbor, they may like.
Ah OK so alkalinized it didn’t help. I may try something along these lines but add honey or molasses to sweeten it to balance the dry bitterness of the chocolate. I’ll have to do some research to see what others have done. Thanks Dan.
Benny
Benny, I don’t find bitter and sour are complementary. I’d use CY if attempting again. If not CY then YW.
I gave the bread to my neighbor. Maybe they will give me a good report.
I still have my bottle of grape yeast water from way back during the CB. Maybe I should consider seeing it if it still active, it is super old so may not be but it is worth trying to see if a tsp of it added to some grapes would get going. I shall look at other iterations of chocolate sourdough because I know some bakers on IG who have made them many times.
Yes, give this another go with some flavour adjustments. Benny recently baked with rum and apricots which got me thinking about my favourite chocolate of rum and raisin. Thought: combine this soft textured loaf with rum and raisin flavour!
Cheers,
Gavin
Great looking loaves! This recipe seems to have no sugar or sweet ingredients. Would a bit of semi-sweet chocolate chips improve the taste or even give it more "chocolate" taste? The chocolate sourdough from a local bakery (fresh today, really delicious!) had neither sourness nor bitterness; whatever sweetness it had probably came from pockets of soft chocolate chips or chopped chocolate. Not sure what their recipe is though. These three popular chocolate bread recipes (1,2,3) have got sweet ingredients in them.
Thanks for the great links, Harum. When it comes to sweet chocolate bread I am pretty settled on Chocolate Babka, though. I was hoping to use chocolate powder for a non-sweet bread. The dark rich color is so nice.
By the way - this bread used 3% honey, hoping to offset the bitter chocolate.
Danny I found a study that referenced another with a quote “ alimentary tannin consolidated the glutenic structure and the stability and elasticity of the dough was increased.” So from what they determined or thought it is the tannin in the cocoa that tightens the dough by increasing the elasticity of the dough. To counter this I’m going to try using some spelt, hoping to offset some of the increased elasticity. For sweetness I’ll add semi-sweet chocolate and some dried cherries, wish me luck.
Benny
Benny, the elasticity was actually very nice, even with the super high hydration. I liked the way the dough handled.
your information does seem to explain why it handled so well.
Another thought on the bitterness of chocolate Dan, salt can help reduce bitterness. By reducing the salt a bit it may have unmasked the bitterness a bit. Just a thought, I was just reading an article on salt and they mention it masking the bitterness of dark chocolate which is why one sees so many salted chocolates nowadays.