August 31, 2016 - 7:47pm
Chocolate breads
I have been trying to make some chocolate breads, croissant and pate a choux for the past couple of years, have yet to make anything that tastes like chocolate. I have tried increasing the cocoa powder and nothing happens. I have used regular cocoa powder, dutch processed, and even the Valrhona dark cocoa powder, even trying to figure out a way to use melted unsweetened and dark chocolate. Anyone have any words of wisdom, a different product or am I just not going to get the chocolate flavor I'm looking for in these items? Any help would be amazing!
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I think the way to get something to taste like chocolate is to use a lot of chocolate. Cakes taste like chocolate and they are pretty rich. I do feel like choux paste could be possible to chocolatize, but I wonder "why?" Is it for a "cool" factor? What about pain au chocolat and chocolate eclairs/cream poufs? Chocolate babka?
Some flavors need moisture to bring it in closer contact with the taste buds in order to really taste it. That is why you put a lot more dried herbs in bread than you would in a sauce. That is why chocolate cake tastes chocolatey but chocolate bread may not.
Another way to try to get the chocolate to be tasted is to add a flavor enhancer like either sugar,vanilla or coffee. The taste buds sense these other tastes more easily and the chocolate flavor tags along as an aftertaste. If you want the psychological factor of color to influence the taste buds, then make the color look chocolatey by adding something that would do that- coffee, caramel color, a dark flour, etc. Our minds often play tricks. As an example-I made a very cheesy macaroni and cheese for a friend as a comfort food (she was having hard times). For color, I added diced red, SWEET pepper. She convinced herself that the dish was so hot it burned her mouth with all the red peppers in it and couldn't eat it. I tasted it-not a bit of heat. Very interesting. She was not a cook and only knew red peppers as being hot so that is what she tasted.
As a chocolate lover, I never much enjoyed any form of chocolate bread unless it had a source of good chocolate taste like chips,filling,frosting or a sauce.
Have fun!
not in the dough. The intensity of the chocolate filling contrasting against the faint sweetness of the dough makes the chocolate flavor really pop. It's sort of like comparing hot fudge sauce on vanilla ice cream to chocolate ice cream. The latter never seems quite chocolate-y enough, somehow. The filling in this babka recipe is a good example.
Paul
I had a friend that I lost touch with that made a pretty cool and interesting chocolate and cherries bread boule. He gave it to me a few years ago before I got serious about baking so I wasn't as critical a taster back then. I remember thinking it was very 'cool' as pmccool (no pun intended) said. I do recall that the cherries actually dominated the loaf - it was a lovely dark chocolate coloured crumb.
But as I read your post I couldn't help but think how it would be interesting to experiment with making a vanilla and chocolate loaf (not be be confuse with cake thought).. think of those dark and light coloured rectangular loaf pan loafs that have a dark braid and light braid, so that when you cut a slice you get a bit of both types of rye in one cohesive loaf.. that would be neat if you could make it happen.. something like this:
Please let us know your progress and post some pictures!