Being a daughter of a baker, I always have a somewhat hankering for baking. It could be for baking cakes, pasta or even bread. My hankering with Asian cuisine was not so strong as cooking Asian cuisine was done daily, though sometimes I do up my game with some Chinese, Japanese, Thailand and Korean cooking and if I could be so un-modest, I would say that they comes out bearable most of the times, if not good.
Back to the recipe 😅 , (about) a week ago, my daughter requested for a cupcakes full with its embellishments and sprinkles, and to be true to time, the oven's plug has busted the weekend before that. Then was when I realize we do have a bread-maker in the house. It seems my daughter's cupcake doesn't have anything to do with the story too. Hahaha. Okay, by realizing there's a bread-maker in the house, I started to look for recipe to bake bread, I can't use my mother's bread recipe as her's uses bread flour which I don't have. I found a recipe that claim they have a recipe for a soft bread. I have tried to trace the recipe again, but all that I have is a screenshot of the ingredients and the webpage: techocolateandmore.com which I also fail to open when typed. It is actually an either soft bread loaf recipe or soft buns recipe, which of course I edited. Well I need to edit the recipe to feed my picky firstborn...
Ingredients:
4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 - 1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup of milk powder
1 1/2 cup hot/warm water
1/3 cup sugar
1 pack active dry yeast
1 egg
1/3 cup vegetable shortening
1/3 - 1/2 cup chocolate chip
Methods:
1) Stir the sugar in the water and pour in the yeast. Leave for about 5 minutes until foamy while you prepare the other ingredient.
2) Put the flour, salt and cocoa powder in a bowl, whisk until mixed and make a well in the middle.
3) Pour in the egg that have been beaten and the yeast mixture. Mix in the shortening too.
4) Knead, if possible without adding any flour. Knead until at least until the dough prefer to stick to each other rather than the wall of the bowl, better yet, you could do the window pane test (which I have yet to master). I wouldn't lie, a proper baker would properly told you to knead on a flat surface, but as I am lacking a proper flat surface and I want to reduce surfaces I need to clean afterwards, I rather knead in the bowl it self, or better, a flat-bottomed pot. If the pot have a lid of it's own is even better. I just put the lid onto the pot to leave it to rise.
5) Leave to rise until double in size; for about 1 hour.
6) Knead for a minute while incorporating the chocolate chip into the dough.
7) Divide to small equal balls (18 balls?) and arrange in a baking pan. Let rise for about 1 hour.
8) Heat the oven halfway to the bread rise to about 180C
9) Bake the bread for about 25-30 minutes. Lower the heat to 175C when you put the bread into the oven.
