Recipe: Chocolate & Hazelnut Spiced Loaf

Another backdated Bake Along, this time from bread week. Now, I make a lot of bread. In fact I’m determined by the end of the year to eat as little bought bread as possible (my weakness = M&S Baguettes). Between us me and W make a damn good white loaf, decent bagels, wholemeal rolls and even pitta breads. We’re also currently attempting sourdough which is an interesting and ever-so frustrating process.

What we’d never tried before, however, was a sweet loaf. Inspired by Rav’s creation on GBBO (I was a little disappointed by him, I was expecting some inventive vegan recipes but apparently not!) this sweet loaf is gentle spiced, rich with chocolate and textured from hazelnuts. As it’s a two-strand braid it doesn’t require any complex plaiting skills (neither of us was up to that!), and a lot of time is spent waiting for it to prove, making it perfect for lazy Sundays – bread making is perfect for those days where you snuggle up with a film.

This Chocolate & Hazelnut Spiced Loaf is moist with a tender crumb, the crust is soft and sweet from the glaze, and the whole thing is fragrant with cardamon. It certainly made the flat smell good!

Ingredients

• 120ml milk
• 50g sugar
• 1½ tsp yeast
• 1 egg
• 275g white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp ground green cardamom seeds
• 50g very soft butter, plus extra for greasing
• 60g dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces
• 30g chopped hazelnuts
• 1 egg yolk (we used the white to make a whisky sour cocktail…), to glaze
• 125g sugar & 110ml water – for the sugar syrup

For the dough, combine the milk, half the sugar and the yeast in a jug. Add the egg and lightly beat to combine. In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, cardamom and the remaining sugar until well combined. Add the milk mixture and combine. Knead in the bowl until you have a smooth dough – we found it to be quite a sticky dough, so cheated and popped it into our Kitchen Aid with dough-hook attachment.

Rub about 10g of the butter onto a clean work surface. Tip the dough out and knead in another 20g butter until well combined and the dough forms a smooth ball. Transfer the dough to a lightly buttered bowl and cover with cling film. Prove in a warm place until doubled in size, whilst you make the glaze. Heat the caster sugar and 112ml/3¾fl oz water in a saucepan. When the sugar has dissolved, set it aside to cool – this is the sugar syrup.

Tip the risen dough out onto the work surface and roll out into a rectangle approximately 26x35cm. Spread the remaining butter on the dough and sprinkle over the chocolate and hazelnuts. Roll it up like a sausage and pinch to seal. Slice the dough lengthways to make two strands, then pinch together at one end and tightly coil together. Transfer to a loaf tin, cover and put in a warm place to prove again until doubled in size. Preheat the oven to 200C.

Whisk the egg yolk with 2 teaspoons water then brush onto the proved loaf. Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden-brown – if you tap the bottom of the loaf (out of the tin) it should sound hollow. Leave to cool a little in the tin, then brush the sugar syrup onto the loaf. Remove from the tin and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

We found that this took a lot of work, but it was worth it. I loved it served slightly warm with a cuppa, whilst W really enjoyed it for breakfast. I imagine it would be great toasted and spread with Nutella too! I did think that the cardamon flavor in ours was a little too strong, so I’ve reduced it in the amounts above – next time I’d also be tempted to add a little grated orange zest just to add a bit of sharpness.

Have you been baking recently? Who was your favorite GBBO contestant of 2016?