Chocolate Bread? Chocolate Cake? Chocolate Muffin?

What's with the confusion? Not that I couldn't decide what to bake or what to eat, but rather, the final product that I actually baked.

See, I had this sudden brilliant idea about a chocolate bread and I finally tested it out. It's not that brilliant as in other bakers couldn't have done it, but it's brilliant in that sense my brains FINALLY thought of it. It was just a variation of the basic bread recipe that I had working for me. Sounds duh? Ah well, that's how "sad" my baking are these days =(

Anyway, I threw the ingredients into my breadmaker before I slept and I did wake up a few times in the middle of the night, woken up by the wonderful smell which had practically invaded the house. I was wondering who was cooking something really yummy, but I was way too groggy to remember that it could be the bread. My hubby tried waking me up and I was mumbling about that I was only getting up later when I remembered about my bread and almost jumped out of bed. He must have been astonished why I got up suddenly and was so awake.

When I opened up the breadmaker, my heart sank a little. The load wasn't really high, and I was thinking if I had messed up on the yeast, and if it was just going to be a tough HARD loaf that was going to break my teeth (inside family joke). I turned the pan upside down onto the board and the loaf slide out BEAUTIFULLY. I tried to slice it, and I went "wow" as my knife went in smoothly without any resistance. And finally, the taste? See the title. The texture was unlike a bread. It was a cross between a cake and a muffin, because the texture was really FINE. And yah, it was crumbly, probably have to add another egg or 2 to the recipe. Needless to say, I'm happy. VERY happy. This was probably the best BREAD I ever had baked.

Machine: Carrefour's Blue Sky Breadmaker

Setting: 900g Load, Light Colour

Cycle: Basic

Time started: 9:30pm

Time checked: 6:30am

Ingredients

(starting from items to be placed inside the pan first)

300ml milk (warm)

1/4 cup butter or 1/2 stick butter or 75g butter

1 egg (probably will increase to 2 the next time I try it)

400g flour

50g dutch processed cocoa powder (tudor or van houten brand)

6 tablespoon of sugar (if you like it a little sweeter, then add 1 more tablespoon)

3/4 tablespoon of instant yeast

1/2 teaspoon of salt

To add: 1 cup of couveture dark chocolate drops when the machine beeps/ or after the machine has finished kneading the first round.

If you want some resemblance of chocolate chips in the bread, add only during the final kneading stage. Couveture chocolate melts very easily, and is unlikely to have some bits left, so you may want to try adding normal semi sweet chocolate chips instead.

Bon appetit!