I wanted to try something different, and as I was flipping through my baking books I noticed I had marked a recipe for chocolate bread. I almost flipped past, but then I noticed the ingredient list was relatively simply. So I decided to try it.

Please note, that as usual for me, I did not thoroughly read the recipe, so I failed to notice this had TWO overnight rises. So starting on Saturday? Not so great.Otherwise, it’s a fairly straightforward recipe.

Now I need to decide what is the best topping to go with it.

Chocolate Bread (recipe is actually White and Dark Chocolate Bread, but 1) I was out of white chocolate and 2) I wanted all dark chocolate)
I actually diverged a bit from her process, to make things easier for me.

1 3/4 cup warm water
5 tsp yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup Dutch process cocoa
4 to 5 cups bread flour

1/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

Proof yeast. Add sugar, cocoa, salt and 3 cups of sugar and mix. Switch to dough hook and add more flour as necessary till pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Place dough in oiled rising bowl and refrigerate overnight.

In a food processor, combine butter, sugars, and cocoa and process until you have a crumbly mixture. Refrigerate until ready to use.

On a lightly floured surface, roll dough into a large rectangle (16″ x 10″). Sprinkle butter, sugar and cocoa mix over the dough. Sprinkle bittersweet chips over that.

Working from one of the short ends, roll up like a jelly roll. Divide roll in half and place into two greased 8″ bread pans.

Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Remove pans from refrigerator and allow to rise for 2 to 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 350.

Spray tops with water and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon (I had vanilla sugar and that was fabulous!)

Bake 35 to 45 minutes, cool for 20 minutes, then turn onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

from A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman

Yes, it’s that time of year again! (It’s the most wonderful time of the year!)

All things considered, I think I did pretty well this weekend, although my ankle has been none too pleased with me in the aftermath.

So far this year:
Sour cream nutmeg cookies
Lemon coolers
Sugar cookies
Peanut butter kisses
Peanut butter shortbread bars
Cranberry oatmeal cookies
Bourbon balls
Pumpkin walnut bread
Chocolate bread

Are you ready for some cookies?!

Yes, that is, in fact, a calculator. I bake by weight. And lots of recipes don’t give weights, so I have to calculate what 2 3/4 cup flour actually weights.

And trust me, you do NOT want to rely upon my math skills when baked goods are on the line.

Peanut butter shortbread bars with sugar cookies in the back ground.

Michael is in charge of the bourbon balls.

This is because he eats 95% of them.

(KIDS! Can you find: three trees, one star, one holly leaf, two dinosaurs, one snowman, and two elephants?)

What? You don’t have elephant and dinosaur shaped sugar cookies for Christmas? For heaven sakes! What kind of holiday spirit is that?!

Can you guess what those plans are?

I’ve been missing making bread, and since I wanted something just slightly sweet, I decided upon a loaf of challah. Today’s fail: counting. I added three eggs (plus on egg yolk) instead of two (plus one egg yolk). The extra egg was extra small, but I was still annoyed with myself.

Turned out fine despite me.

(more…)

Cooked down six pumpkins today, to give us a total of 15 cups of pumpkin.

Hopefully, this will last us–last winter we ran out of pumpkin in February.

I spent the weekend with my grandmother, so I actually made nothing this weekend. Instead, please enjoy this loaf of cranberry walnut bread from the week before.

When I came across Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey: Desserts for the Serious Sweet Tooth by Jill O’Connor, I really couldn’t help myself. Everything in the book is amazing looking, however, everything also tends to make large batches, which is no good for the two of us.

As much as I want to make the Sugar Crusted Brownie Sundaes with Whiskey Caramel Walnut Sauce, I settled for the Chocolate Chunk Pecan Cookies instead, especially since I can freeze the cookies unbaked.

The Best One-Bowl Chocolate Chunk-Pecan Cookies
2 cups pecan halves
1 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chunks (I used Ghiradelli Bittersweet chocolate chips, as I had them on hand)

Toast pecans (350 for 7 min).

Where this recipe is different is that instead of creaming the butter and the sugar, you melt the butter, then add in the additional ingredients. You are also supposed to mic everything by hand, but as the recipe calls for 1/4 sized cookies, and I don’t like giant cookies, I used the mixer to break up the pecans a bit.

Scoop out the dough onto a cookie sheet and place in the refrigerator for 45 to 60 minutes.

If you make smaller cookies (like I did) I baked ’em at 350 for 12 to 13 minutes. I also froze what unbaked cookies I had left, so now I’ll have fresh cookies when I come home from work after one of those days.

Chocolate makes many things better.

No pics today folks, I find myself needing long breaks while baking to put my foot up, so I didn’t bother with the camera.

I did, however, attempt my first loaves of sourdough bread. I think I’m going to need to work at it a bit. The dough turned out entirely too moist and sticky, so I ended up dumping the mess into bread pans least I end up with sourdough crackers. The loves, unsurprisingly, look ugly. Very ugly.

But that’s okay. I’ve got time to learn. And if I decided it’s not working out, I have no problems going back to normal yeast breads–I’ve still got plenty of experimentation to do there as well.

And since I don’t have any pictures of my own for you, I leave you with this: an xkcd wedding cake.

It’s time for the once a semester GA meeting, so, as the one who called the meeting, I figure it’s my job to supply enticements.

Last meeting was a week after I broke my ankle, so all they got was pizza, but this time I felt up (with rest & elevate the ankle breaks) to make cookies.

Mmmmm!

Michelle (whining): I want something sweet. What do we have that’s sweet? Wait a sec! I have chocolate! HEY! Where’s my chocolate?!
Michael: (evil laugh)

Was sitting here thinking how my foot was aching and how miserable I was when KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

I have the best friends EVAR! (I’ve received other loot, but as it wasn’t perishable, I haven’t yet documented its existence.)

Thank you so much Natalie & Larry and The Pink Thing! (TPT ordered the balloon.)

I’ve been making bread fairly regularly since the beginning of the year. This week I decided to try the recipe from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.

His ingredients and technique are different from the recipe I’d been using out of the The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion, and although I didn’t follow it 100% (I make my biga right before I go to bed, I wasn’t about to wait 2 to 4 hours, then refrigerate, then pull it out and let it warm up for an hour before continuing; never mind the lack of room in my refrigerator.)

1) I love spring when strawberries are in season. Yum, yum yum!

2) Janiece is made of six different kinds of awesome: Grandmom received two jars of apple butter today!

3) I’ve been reading through baking books, but haven’t yet gotten around to writing a single review. I’ll try to get to that in the near future.
For reference, the books are:
Bakewise, by Shirley O. Corriher
The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart
Baking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America
and currently on my bed stand is Baking with Julia

Of the four, I think I found the CIA book most useful; Bakewise would have been rated higher, but it really needed a better editor–the tidbits often wandered afield and never quite made it home.

Actually, there may be more, but I can’t think of ’em right now.