Chocolate Calico Bread 🍞🍫 (BBT Challenge)

Baking Bloggers Telephone Challenge — Instructions

Post these instructions at the top of your blog post. ❤ #BBTChallenge
Consider the baked good recipe you were given by the person who tagged you, and then change it to make it your own! This is Baking Telephone!
Write step-by-step instructions for the whole recipe (including your changes!) in your post, and make sure they’re as easy to follow as possible. Please understand that everyone has access to different baking equipment and resources, so substitutes are allowed as needed! (i.e. No bread maker? Oven is fine! Can you sub out cornstarch for potato starch? Sure, if you think it works!)
Please tag the person whose recipe you’re modifying so they can see it! Please also tag me (Shoujothoughts!) because I wanna see ALL the transformations!! I’m so excited to see everyone’s takes!
Have fun, please! Don’t stress if you think it turned out wrong! None of us are professionals (that I know of, but heeeyyy, if you are, nice) and that’s totally fine. ❤ Just mention what you’d do differently next time and watch it transform!
Please complete the challenge within two weeks of being tagged. If you cannot do so, that’s okay! Just let the person who tagged you know within that same time fame so that they can tag someone else. 🙂

Okay! So! Bread makers are great, and I use mine often. If you, however, are without a bread maker, I’ll add conventional oven adaptations (I hope they work!) below the bread maker recipe! Due to my personal tendency to give myself ✨severe✨ burns (*sigh*), I no longer make standard bread in the oven, but I’ve done my research and I have hope that the conventional oven instructions will lead to good results.

This recipe originally came from the pamphlet/small book that shipped with my unit. I took the white bread recipe and added my own touch for something a little different; then, I tried adapting it for a traditional oven. I’m very happy with how it turned out!

This recipe makes a single lightly crusted, one-pound loaf of bread. I call it Chocolate Calico because that’s the first word that popped into my head, what with its darker splotches of chocolate on top. 🍞🍫 (I like cats; don’t ask me to be logical about my bread naming, you silly geese!) The flavor is veeeeeeeery subtle and inoffensive, but it adds just a little something that I personally really enjoy!

Original Recipe:

If using a bread maker, add the following ingredients in the following amounts in the following order; Don’t let your salt touch your yeast!

Program your maker for a one pound, lightly crusted loaf!

At about 8-10 minutes into the first knees cycle, poke your dough. Tacky (but not sticky) is good! If the dough is dry or hard, add like 1-2 tsp of water, and if it is dry, add the same of flour. (In my experience, it will only ever be correct or a tad dry.)

Add about one cup (eyeballed!) of mini chocolate chips just before the last kneed cycle. 🙂

At the end of the second rise, check the dough again! If you poke the dough and it springs back, it’s not done rising. If I’m 15-20 minutes a repeated test shows different results (the poked dough does not spring back), leave it alone. If it DOES spring back, use a spatula to pull the dough away from the pan to deflate it by about 1/3.

Remove when finished, let sit for a few minutes, and enjoy plain or nicely buttered🧈 ! ❤

Conventional Oven Recipe (I hope it works!):

After you mix your ingredients (in order!), add the mini chocolate chips (again, eyeball it, but about a cup and or so) and kneed them into the bread well on a clean, un-floured surface until it can be stretched without ripping.

When you reach that point, form the dough into a ball and let the it rise in a covered bowl in a warmish place for at least one hour. Then poke it! If the indentation stays, you’re ready to bake. If it pops back out, you need to let the dough rise more. Check back again in another 30 minutes or so and try again. If it’s still not ready, keep checking back approximately every 30 minutes. It should take no more than 2 hours.

Either place the round dough ball in the middle of a nonstick baking pan and cover with foil OR place it in a nonstick bread pan and cook for 30-35 minutes at a !preheated! 350 degrees. If covered in foil, remove the foil for the last like 10 minutes. (Watch for burning!!) Remove from oven and let rest for about 10 minutes. Enjoy!

I gave this loaf to my work colleague as a birthday bread! (Birthday bread!!) She’s been having a rough go of it lately, and I thought that if anything could cheer someone up, it’s a baked good! (I am a simple soul. Give me warm bread or a good soup—or both!—and I’m in Heaven. 🥰) Now to make another one for me!

To follow me, I’m tagging Anime Science 101. Good luck! 🍀 I can’t wait to see what lovely creation you devise!

(AS101 doesn’t have an active blog at present, so he’ll be posting in a community Discord (Jon Spencer’s Discord), and I’ll also post his recipe here on my blog so the next person can be tagged and post in the blogosphere! From there, it will proceed as the instructions dictate!)