Ugly Chocolate Bread

Soft and spongy chocolate layer bread

I saw these gorgeous chocolate breads on a Taiwanese blog. They remind me of a squared bread I loooooved as a child. In between the bread are layers of chocolate. Thinking back...the bread didn't have a chocolate taste. I guess anything brown and found in a bakery would be mistaken as 'chocolate'. Or chocolate was too expensive an ingredient so they skimmed on the chocolate and used less cocoa powder and replaced the rest with powdered milk. Too bad I couldn't find a picture to  tried to find the recipe on Yahoo Taiwan, but it seems like chocolate layer cake and crepes are more popular than my childhood favorite.

Another unfortunate thing is I failed at replicating my childhood memory. It turned out to be...really ugly. I couldn't get the bread to contain its shape when I put them in the oven. So on my second batch, I cut the dough into nine pieces and baked them in a brownie pan. They retained their shape! And they have a softer texture than the ones baked individually.

Was intended on making 'squared' bread

For the recipe, I used the tang zhong dough I shared previously on my blog. Follow the link and follow the recipe until after the first rise. Then follow the recipe below to make the chocolate block.

To make chocolate layers, you will be folding the dough and chocolate block together like you would be doing to make croissants. So what you do first is roll out the bread dough into a rectangle, place the chocolate block in the middle, then take 1/3 of the dough and fold over the chocolate. Take the left side of the dough and fold over to the right. Now it looks like a book--one where you would flip the page from right to left. Rotate the dough 90 degree South, so the book opening is facing you.

Use the rolling pin to flatten the dough, and repeat the folding process.

After giving the dough two folds, you can either cut them up into squares and place them in a brownie pan OR follow this blog for more twistful ideas.

Last bake the bread in the oven for 15-20 minute, and enjoy!