Pumpkin Chocolate Bread

A new recipe for homemade bread - we are preparing an original, delicious and delicate pumpkin-chocolate. It will surprise you not only with its pleasant taste, tenderness and airiness, but also with a beautiful pattern on the cut. Bread with pumpkin puree and cocoa is great for making dessert sandwiches (with butter, jam, jam, honey) for a cup of morning tea or coffee.

I found the recipe for this delicious bread from Olenka Stikhareva (thank you, dear!) And immediately fired up to repeat it. As a result, I had no doubts, since this excellent and experienced chef has no bad or unsuccessful recipes. True, unlike the original, it took me a little more flour, but this is quite predictable and understandable.

The taste of pumpkin bread with cocoa is not very sweet, although I classified it as a dessert. But I do not recommend serving it with first courses or for sandwiches with meat. Pumpkin dough turns out to be unusually tender and juicy, while there is no characteristic pumpkin taste, do not worry. The brown layer has a richer chocolate flavor, and the texture is just as soft and airy.

Another point: the saturation of the orange dough directly depends on the variety (I have nutmeg) and the color of the pumpkin. That is, the more intense the color of the pulp, the more juicy in color the pumpkin dough will be. True, as a rule, color in finished baked goods does not play a special role, but only gives aesthetic pleasure.

Ingredients

• Wheat flour of the highest grade (280 grams)
• Pumpkin puree (80 grams)
• Milk (70 milliliters)
• Egg yolk (2 pieces)
• Chicken eggs (1 piece)
• Cocoa powder (1 tablespoon)
• Sugar (1 tablespoon)
• Butter (30 grams)
• Fast acting yeast (1 teaspoon)
• Salt (0.5 teaspoon)

Directions

1. The recipe for this bright and delicious homemade bread includes the following ingredients: premium wheat flour, thick pumpkin puree, milk of any fat content, butter, chicken egg and egg yolks, unsweetened cocoa powder, granulated sugar, salt and fast-acting yeast. To make pumpkin puree, bake the peeled pulp in the oven until soft, then fold it onto a sieve (to remove excess moisture) and punch with an immersion blender (you can rub it through a sieve). It is not necessary to take fast-acting yeast - just dry (also 1 teaspoon without a slide is 3 grams) or pressed (you need 3 times more, that is, 9-10 grams) are perfect. Such yeast is not immediately mixed with flour, but pre-activated in a warm sweetish liquid for 10-15 minutes. In our case, you can slightly warm up half a glass of milk with a tablespoon of sugar and dissolve the yeast in it.
2. Sift (preferably twice) wheat flour of the highest grade into a bowl of a suitable size. Due to this, the flour will not only loosen and be saturated with oxygen, but also lumps and possible debris will go away. You may take a little more or less flour than mine in the recipe, so do not add everything at once (leave 30-50 grams for now)
3. We put fast-acting yeast, sugar and salt to the flour. Mix everything thoroughly with a whisk or fork so that all products are evenly dispersed throughout the entire volume.
4. We make a hole in the flour mixture and pour lukewarm milk into it. Add 2 egg yolks and ready-made pumpkin puree there.
5. First, you can stir the ingredients with a spoon or fork to moisten the flour by absorbing the liquid ingredients. If you want, you can immediately knead the dough with your hands. If you have a kneader or bread maker, be sure to use their help - it's easier and faster. Then add very soft butter and knead the dough.
6. You need to knead the dough for this bread for a rather long time (at least 10, and preferably 15 minutes) and intensively. As a result, it will become smooth, uniform, very soft (like an earlobe) and tender, while relatively sticky. Relatively - this means that it does not smear on the palm, but sticks away from it, leaving a small mark in the form of pieces of dough. I do not advise clogging the dough with flour, trying to make it not sticky at all, as the result will not be an airy, fluffy and tender bread.
7. Now we divide the bun into 2 parts. We transfer one part to a separate bowl or directly to the work surface. Add cocoa powder and one egg white to this dough (leave the yolk to grease the workpiece). Knead the chocolate dough until smooth and uniform. If you have the protein from a large egg, you may need to add a little more flour to get the dough together and become the same consistency as the yellow (pumpkin) dough.
8. It's time to rest the dough. Since it is not too much of it, you can put the balls in one bowl, just make a partition of parchment paper or a simple bag between them (grease with a small amount of refined vegetable oil so that the dough does not stick). Leave the dough warm for 1 hour. Where is the best place for dough to roam and what does a warm place mean? There are several options. First of all, in the oven with the light on (it turns out about 28-30 degrees - the ideal temperature for fermenting yeast dough). Then we tighten the bowl with the dough with cling film or cover with a towel made of natural fabric (linen is best suited) so that the surface does not wind up and does not become covered with a crust. You can also let the dough ferment in the microwave, in which we first bring a glass of water to a boil. The dough will rise with the door closed, and the glass will stand in the same place. Then the bowl does not need to be closed with anything, since the water will evaporate, thereby maintaining the necessary humidity. Just make sure that no one inadvertently turns on the microwave, otherwise the dough will disappear and our beautiful bread will be gone.
9. After 1 hour (+/- 10-15 minutes, depending on the activity of the yeast and the temperature in the room), the dough rises well and at least doubles in volume.
10. Let's start shaping the future pumpkin-chocolate bread. Sprinkle the working surface with wheat flour (not included in the mass of ingredients, but a tablespoon is enough) and put one of the koloboks.
11. With our hands or using a rolling pin, we turn the dough into a rather thin (just not thinner than 1 centimeter) layer, the width of which will be equal to the length of your baking dish. The dough is very pliable and tender, so it rolls out without problems.
12. We do the same with chocolate dough. After that, we put the brown layer on the pumpkin layer, not forgetting to shake off the excess flour between them with a brush.
13. We fold both layers into a rather dense roll (on the narrow side), trying not to leave air between them. We pinch the longitudinal seam, the sides can be left as they are.
14. We put the roll of yeast dough in a suitable baking dish, which must be greased with vegetable oil. I have this special baking pan made of high quality food grade aluminum alloy.
15. Let the workpiece stand in the heat for about an hour or until the dough grows 3 times. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Before baking, grease the surface of the future bread with egg yolk (remember, it remained when we made the chocolate dough?).
16. We bake the pumpkin-chocolate bread on a medium level at 180 degrees for 30-35 minutes until an appetizing golden brown crust is formed and fully cooked.
17. We take out the finished bread (after cooling, the loaf weighs 540 grams) from the mold and let it cool completely on the wire rack. If your bread is very tall, cool it on the side. I can't help dwelling on one defect, which, I'm sure, is visible to the naked eye - my bread is cracked in the area of ​​\ u200b \ u200bthe roof. This happens when the workpiece is not completely spaced, but in this case I am sure that I have allocated enough time for this.