A Loathful Loaf.

So last week while I was in England visiting my brother, we had this discussion in the middle of the night about chocolate bread and how we want to make and eat it. So I did a google search, and because we were in the UK, the first few results were UK recipes. This tickled my baking fancy, so I saved one of the recipes, and decided to try my hand at it when I got home. And yesterday, that’s exactly what I did.

I did not succeed. It looked decent – and the dough tasted pretty good (I always taste my dough, just to be safe). But the finished product just did not pass muster.

looks can be deceiving.

Now, I don’t think it was entirely the recipe’s fault. I believe there were three factors at play here, leading up to the perfect storm of bread failure:

1. The recipe did not clearly specify the type of chocolate. I used unsweetened dark baking chocolate. Bad choice. It overpowered the entire loaf and gave it a distinctly bitter taste.

2. I used dry yeast instead of fresh yeast. Now, in itself, this is fine, however, I definitely used too much – you could actually taste the yeast (once you got past the bitter chocolate).

3. British food is different from American food. Not bad different – I thoroughly enjoyed all the meals I had in the UK, and I think I would have thoroughly enjoyed the bread as well, different as it were, had it not been for the first two factors.

Because I just could not believe that this loaf was as bad as it seemed, I lugged it in to work and forced my friend to sample it. First, as is. Then heated up. Then with butter. Then I tried to make random folks nearby eat it. But alas, it could not be saved. This bread was toast.

The good  news is, like I mentioned, I know what the issues are, and I fully intend to jump back into the kitchen, make some recipe modifications, and try, try again. There will be chocolate bread, I decree, and it will be fantastic.