Fantastic Bake Along – Chili/Chocolate Bread!

So this month`s bake along, hosted by Tracy@It’s a T-Sweets day ,was a Chili/Chocolate Bread recipe from Tina@ Kristabella’s Hodgepodge.

Well I have to admit I`m not a big fan of chilies, but I love chocolate, so I thought I will give the recipe a try:

Chili/Chocolate Bread Recipe by Tina @ Kristabella’s Hodgepodge 

For a small loaf (1 lb.)

• 3/4 c Milk, room temperature 
• 1/4c Unsalted Butter, room temperature, 1/2″ pieces 
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 2tbs Granulated Sugar 
• 2 1/4c Bread Flour   
• 1 1/2tsp Chili Powder 
• 1 1/2tsp Yeast, active dry, instant, or bread machine  
• 1c Chocolate Chips

Select the ‘Basic/White’ program, 1 lb., and your desired crust color, and start the machine. When the mix-in tone sounds, add 1 cup chocolate chips.   

Note: The Ghirardelli chips have a very intense chocolate taste. The Chili therefore is just an aftertaste…a mild ‘burn’. To intensify the Chili flavor you might wanna use Milk Chocolate Chips. 😊

Cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

I was making the bread also for my toddler to eat, so I did cut down on the chili. I do not have a bread machine, so I added all the ingredients, except the chocolate, into my mixer and mixed it for few minutes. The dough seemed very thin so I had to add extra 1/4cup of flour and mixed it for another 5 minutes.

Then I left it to rise for couple of hours. In the meantime I  did some other things in the house, and when I went upstairs to put the baby for nap, my toddler saw his chance to help himself to some chocolate I left on the kitchen counter:

Well luckily I was not planing to serve it to any guests, so I chopped what was left of it into small pieces (can you believe you cannot buy chocolate chips in normal supermarkets in this country?!?!) and mixed it into the dough after the first rise.

After an hour of proofing I have popped the bread into the oven for 20 minutes, but probably I should have bake it on lover temperature as it came out little bit darker than I wanted to. Also the bread stuck to the pan, so I had bit of a problem taking it out, and at some point I had to scrape out some of it…

Even though I`m not the biggest fan of chilies, I did like the bread, specially the texture of it. I`m already thinking of baking it next week again, but then substitute the chilies and chocolate for raisins (I love anything with raisins…), maybe add some honey into the mix as well. Also next time when I make the bread with chocolate, I will grate the chocolate instead of cutting it into pieces, or use chocolate sprinkles instead 🙂

Once again, it was a fun Bake Along, and if you`d like to participate next time as well, just keep an eye on Tracy`s blog.