There were plenty of chocolate sourdough posts recently. I was a bit hesitant in baking my own because, you know, the idea of chocolate bread is just a bit…boring… Cherries, raisins, cranberries, hazelnuts, coffee and not much else. It’s also conventional to pair chocolate with rye or spelt flour. Really, there’s not much creativity to speak of.
If you know anything about me, you understand that I’ve to put my own spin on every bread I bake. Not long ago, I made use of the sweetness of milk chocolate to compliment the strong flavour of goat cheese in bread. However, for this bake, it’s the chocolate that takes the centre stage.
Darjeeling Tea Chocolate Orange Sourdough with Masa Harina and Buckwheat Flour
Dough flour:
210g 70% Whole red wheat flour
60g 20% Masa Harina
30g 10% Buckwheat flour (raise to 15% for more pronounced flavour)
For leaven:
10g 3.3% Starter
10g 3.3% Bran sifted out from dough flour
10g 3.3% Water
For tea:
10g 3.3% Darjeeling tea leaves
50g 16.7% Hot water
For dough:
290g 93.3% Dough flour excluding bran for leaven
206g 68.7% Water
64g 21.3% Whey
50g 16.7% Darjeeling tea
30g 10% Leaven
30g 10% Unsweetened cocoa powder
20g 6.7% Maple syrup (tastes a bit bitter at this %, feel free to increase up to 15%)
9g 3% Vital Wheat Gluten
6g 2% Dark barley malt powder
5g 1.7% Salt
Add-ins:
9g 3% Candied orange peels (might be better at 6%)
33g 11% Chopped dark chocolate
___________
305g 100% Whole grain
335g 109.8% Total hydration (still felt a tad stiff because of the addition of cocoa powder, I suggest upping it further to 112%)
Sift out the coarse bran from the dough flour, reserve 10g for leaven. Soak the rest in equal amount of whey taken from dough ingredients.
Combine all leaven ingredients and let sit until doubled, about 4 hours.
Soak the orange peels in enough hot water to rehydrate. Set aside until needed.
Steep the tea by pouring the hot water over the tea leaves. Leave to infuse for 30 minutes. Strain the mixture and discard the tea leaves.
Roughly combine all dough ingredients except for the salt, leaven and soaked bran, autolyse for 15 minutes. Knead in the reserved ingredients and ferment for 30 minutes. Fold in the add-ins then ferment for 6.5 hours longer.
Preshape the dough then let it rest for 20 minutes. Shape the dough and put in into a banneton. Leave to proof for 12 minutes before retarding for 12 hours.
Preheat the oven at 230°C/446°F. Remove the dough from the fridge to warm up at room temperature for 40 minutes. Spray the dough with water and sprinkle the poppy seeds onto its surface.
Score the dough and bake at 230°C/446°F with steam for 15 minutes then without steam for 25 minutes more or until the internal temperature reaches a minimum of 208°F. Let cool for at least 3 hours before slicing.
This bread bloomed well in the oven. It’s also a rare occasion that I got the scoring right. The crust is pleasingly shiny and crispy.
It was a bit shocking when I cut the bread open. Despite the fact that the dough was properly proofed and carefully handled, the crumb was not as open as I had hoped for. I think the cocoa powder added some significant weight to the dough which resulted in the rather close crumb. The crumb is by no mean dry but could definitely be moister. It might be a wise decision to up the hydration next time I work with cocoa powder. Nevertheless, the dough structure achieved is pretty decent.
I like the corn and Darjeeling tea flavour in the background of this bread. However, the buckwheat is somewhat masked by the cocoa powder. Increasing the percentage of maple syrup and candied orange peels would help in achieving a better balance between sweetness and bitterness.
My first bake with white flour (yes, really) was dedicated to txfarmer’s sourdough ciabatta
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is my second favorite way to eat dark chocolate (my favorite being plain)! So this sound delicious!! What % cocoa solids was the dark chocolate you used? Maybe using something milder will help with the balance of sweet and bitter?
You could also try giving the dough a longer shaped proof before putting it in the fridge, this might help your crumb open up a bit more. Its something, i'm still working on too.
Very nice bake Elsie!
Happy baking
Ru
Not really dark but it doesn't taste very sweet either. I might try using milk or even white chocolate next time when the dough contains so much bitter cocoa powder already.
Usually I do half an hour of shaped proof before retarding but the dough wasn't much degassed this time after shaping. It felt pleasantly airy and bouncy already so I was afraid it would over-proof if I left it for longer at room temperature. Since the resulting bread doesn't look nearly over-proofed, I'll proof it for 5 more minutes next time. Moreover, reducing the amount of cocoa powder to a maximum 6-7% might help in opening the crumb. It should reduce the bitterness as well.
Thanks for your suggestions! I really appreciate your time!
I'm jealous! I can't find any at the Mexican market and have to grind my own using popcorn and that doesn't come out the same at all! Very Cool! Very nice crumb for a 100% whole grain with corn and buckwheat at 30% to boot, with a bunch of add ins. I'd be proud of that and Lucy thinks if you would have proofed it longer, the bloom would have gone away and the crumb wouldn't have been much better This one has to taste plenty chocolatey. We can never get tea flavor to come through in bread with the exception of putting quite a bit Green Matcha, ground fine, tossed right right into the dough as an add in. Sure makes the bread green and perfect for St Paddy's Day but it is a bit bitter too:-) We finally just gave up on it.
We love txfarmer's SD ciabatta even if it takes a day and half of fridge time - it's not like you are working:-) You can't beat her 30 hours baggies either. Her holes are amazing and out of this world. Empress Ying, Ming the Merciless' Daughter, has to have the fastest, lightest hands on Mongo and possibly the entire Universe! I go back to look at her 100% whole wheat baguettes just to see holes that look nearly like white flour ones! I think you have inspired me to see if Lucy wants to make Empress Ying's ciabatta for 4th of July pulled pork?
Nice post and happy baking Elsie.
Love your bread creativity and this one is quite the example of it!
but close enough I think? This is what I learnt from Whole Grains Council:
"Hominy
Soaking corn in an alkali solution makes its B vitamins and amino acids more bioavailable, and (if lime-water is used as the alkali) adds calcium. The resulting corn is known as hominy, or nixtamal. Hominy can be eaten as is, coarsely ground into grits, or mashed to make masa, the dough used for tortillas. The nixtamalization process may cause some bran loss, but as long as this loss is kept to the absolute minimum, hominy and masa are considered by many to be whole grains (though this is not universally accepted)."
Sorry for the confusion. Now you know I'm the one who's jealous. There's no Mexican market in sight! Unless it's an Asian ingredient, I really don't think there would any cases in which I can get it on hand easily yet you can't.
I found that the crumb structure wouldn't be notably compensated if gluten free flour is kept at or under 30%. Some gluten free/ low flour such as barley, masa harina and buckwheat, is so flavorful and aromatic in bread that I can't bear leaving it out!
It's indeed a tough task to preserve the flavour of tea in bread. Upping the strength of tea might solve this particular problem but it brought up another: bitterness :) Maybe try to add some kind of sweetener? White chocolate is a popular pairing for matcha for this reason. I'm in fact keen to bake a non-sweet-dough matcha bread but haven't thought of any interesting combinations worth trying yet...
Txfarmer is truly amazing! Her 100% whole grain baguettes might be my next challenge to take :) Though my ciabatta looks ok, it tastes pretty bland. Even with the long cold retard, it's still white bread after all... Ciabatta with pulled pork is a great idea! Hmm... perhaps pulled pork should be on my menu this week as well?
Speaking of creativity, there's another intriguing (or crazy?) bake coming in your way! It'd be a brightly coloured bread instead.
I'm glad you like the post! Happy baking to you too!
my own attempt at a chocolate enriched dough was yeasted, but it was a bit dense (yummy though), I should have proofed longer as well as upping the hydration a bit. would orange zest work in this bread? orange peel is hard to come by and my own efforts are only so so.
Love the look but some ingredients would be very hard to get here.
A great bake with a twist as usual Elsie
Leslie
It'd deliver a citrusy aroma throughout the bread. You might want to use the upper percentage of maple syrup though to compensate for the absence of sweetness from candied orange peel. Or you could sub some rehydrated dried banana (the chewy one, not chip-like one) as a delicious alternative instead. I found out that you need to add at least an equal amount of water for the cocoa powder incorporated in dough. It would turn the dough dry and heavy if not. For enriched dough, it might also help to up the proportion of fats and sugar or mix in some cream cheese and yogurt for their tenderizing property.
I wonder which ingredients are difficult to get in your area? Most of them are pretty common I think, as I don't have access to many unusual western ingredients as well in Hong Kong.
Thanks for your compliment!
When I tasted Darjeeling tea, I find it was a little mild especially when paired with strong flavors like chocolate. How was its taste here? Very nice cross section of the bread. Intriguing combination with the masa harina.
I don't think one could tell it's there without knowing beforehand but it did contribute a mossy and fruity note.
The idea of pairing chocolate and corn actually came from a kind of Japanese chocolate-covered corn snack. Chocolate popcorn is quite a popular choice too (though I always pick caramel flavour over it) so I figured they might be nice together.
Thanks for the comment! Happy baking!