Chocolate bread

Rue des Martyrs, a street that shoots up from the 9th into the 18th arrondissement, is 1 of people normal Paris market streets that would seem to defy enterprise logic by giving no fewer than seven bread bakeries, some of them but a block from a single another.

Since I reside in the community, I’ve had the chance to sample the goods from (virtually*) all of them, and I’ve been especially impressed with the breads I’ve bought from Maison Landemaine, on the eastern sidewalk: their tourte de meule (a round rustic loaf) and their baguette**, both leavened with their normal starter, are exceptional, and they make a extremely very good chocolate bread, too.

In French, the notion of chocolate bread poses a slight semantics dilemma, since the identify discomfort au chocolat (actually, chocolate bread) is previously taken by a a lot-loved member of the viennoiserie family that entails croissant dough wrapped close to one particular or two sticks of chocolate to kind a rectangular minor pad. In some components of France — specifically in the south — this is cutely known as a chocolatine.

But what we are speaking about right here is a standard bread dough that is flavored with cocoa powder and studded with small bits of chocolate — an fully various animal, one that’s more to my taste. And because I’m always hunting for new and delightful ideas to hold my normal starter entertained, it wasn’t long just before I made the decision to make my own.

I remembered Nancy Silverton has a recipe for chocolate cherry bread in her sourdough baking book Breads from the La Brea Bakery, so I looked it up, but hers involves sugar and butter — she produced it to please the clients who came in wanting dessert rather than a loaf of bread — and I needed my dough unenriched.

Rather, I merely elaborated on the recipe I use for my sourdough baguettes, substituting cocoa powder for element of the flour and folding coarsely chopped chocolate into the dough, and producing btard-shaped loaves. Because Nancy Silverton notes that the cocoa powder hinders the rise of the bread, I followed her lead and extra a little fresh yeast to aid the action of the starter.

Aside from this addition of yeast, the technique is really similar to the a single I describe in my baguette post, with an overnight fermentation for flavor and versatility you can refer to it for images of the diverse steps.

Because it is just bread with cocoa powder and a small dark chocolate, it is neither too rich nor as well sweet for breakfast (i.e. no brick feeling in your abdomen, and no sugar crash by mid-morning) and it is a luxurious treat to begin the day with, lightly toasted, and spread with butter or almond butter.

The tight crumb can make it best for tartines and I most likely don’t require to elaborate on the listing of factors you can spread on chocolate bread, but I will say this: raspberry jam or dulce de leche make it really irresistible.

I like it like this, with just chopped chocolate folded in, but you could imagine limitless variations, incorporating dried fruit (cherry, fig, prune), orange peel (as in this loaf) or nuts (pistachios, almonds, walnuts), or potentially changing a minor of the wheat flour with chestnut or malt flour.

This bread stays fresh for a number of days, like most starter-leavened breads, but if the leftovers dry up they’ll make a fine bread pudding or wonderful breadcrumbs they’re the ones I employed for the Noma-type radishes in soil I wrote about recently.

Maison Landemaine
26 rue des Martyrs, Paris 9me
M° Notre-Dame de Lorette
+33 ()1 forty sixteen 03 42 / map it!

* A handful of of them I didn’t bother to check out often a glance at the bread shelf is all it requires to form an viewpoint.

** Bruno Verjus shot a number of video clips of their baguette-creating method.