Bread

   A while back, I blogged about the chocolate bread I made. It was wonderful, not overly sweet, but just enough. I mentioned back then I was thinking of sharing the recipe. Wait no more. The original recipe is there, and I've also added the changes I made to make it work. Give it a try sometime. It really is good bread.

Chocolate Chunk Bread

1 pkg. Fleischmann’s RapidRise Yeast, 2½ cups all-purpose flour, divided1 tsp. salt3 Tbs. cocoa powder 1 cup milk ¼ cup sugar 1 Tbs. butter 3 oz. semisweet baking chocolate, coarsely chopped. In a medium size bowl, combine yeast, salt, cocoa and 1½ cups of flour and stir. In separate container, combine milk, sugar and butter and heat to 120 to 130 F.

Pour milk mixture into dry ingredients and beat until smooth. Add the remaining cup of flour about¼ cup at a time, mixing until flour is completely incorporated. The resulting dough will be quite soft and sticky. Using a bench knife or plastic dough scraper in one hand, knead the dough for five minutes---keep the other hand dusted with flour to facilitate kneading.Allow dough to rest for 10 minutes. Flatten the dough and place chopped chocolate on top.Fold up the sides of the dough and knead to distribute chocolate evenly throughout the dough. Lightly grease a one quart casserole or other oven-safe dish. Dust your hands with cocoa and shape the dough into a round ball. Place the ball of dough in the baking dish and cover with a dry dishtowel. Let rise in a warm place free from drafts until nearly doubled,about one hour. Bake in the middle third of a preheated 350 F. oven for 35 to 40 minutes,or until sides are browned and loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. If the top crust seems to be browning too quickly, cover loosely with foil for the last 10 minutes of  baking. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack. Makes one loaf, about 12 servings. 

***(Craig's changes: I used 1 1/2 packs of RapidRise yeast that I re-hydrated in water with a little sugar to make a 'starter', since 2 previous attempts using this recipe produced no 'rise' in the dough. I also placed the dough in a lightly greased bowl for the first rising. After the first rise of an hour. I also punched the dough down, gave it a quick knead, then placed it in the lightly greased casserole and let it rise for another 45 minutes. These steps seem to have made the difference)***

TTFN