Chocolate and Honey marble Brioche

Ingredients:

A:

  Strong White flour 400g

  Sugar 4tbsp

  Salt 1tsp

  Skimmed milk powder 2tbsp

  Butter (Cut into 1 to 2 cm cubes and kept in fridge) 50g

  Dry yeast 1 1/4tsp

B:

  Water 100ml

  Milk 100ml

  Egg medium 2 (about 100ml)

for adding later:

  Butter (Cut into 1 to 2 cm cubes and kept in fridge) 70g

  Black chocolate 45g (I used 72% coco one. Break into 1 to 2 cm pieces)

  Honey (2tbsp)

  A bit of milk to smooth the surface of bread

Recipe:

Prep. Measure and cut butter into 1 to 2 cm cubes. Keep the 70g butter (for adding later) in fridge.

1. Place the bread pan on your scale then put the ingredients under A: in the order from the list.

2. Put the ingredients under B: in the order from the list into a measure cup, then beat them smooth in the measure cup together then add it in the bread pan.

3. Set the bread pan in to the BM. 

4. Plug the machine, select Brioche menu (Menu 11 for Panasonic SD-2501), select light crust and press Start button.

My note:

Machine starts from rest phase - which kind of no sense to me, looking at the same Panasonic BM family in Japan starts from kneading phase. To make this sense somehow, I thought the dry yeast must be in water so the yeast fermentation starts. Previous 2 breads I baked didn't rise enough, so I changed the order of adding them.

At the last 15 minutes or so, I realised the kneading started (I wasn't keep watching, need to check this next time).

55 minutes later, the machine beeped for adding butter

5. Adding the additional 70g of butter from fridge to bread pan when the beep sounds, then press Start button again. (Indicates timer 2:35)

My note:

One new idea I learn by the few days of research, which didn't occur to me and totally new for this type of machine, is that you can open the lid of BM anytime and that does not make much difference on the final results of the baking.

Because the machine keeps dough in a certain temperature to accelerate the fermentation, you don't want to keep opening the lid, but that still allow to look inside of BM or adding what you like during the machine still working by the timer.

So from here, my recipe is experiment more "adding" during the regular menu.

As a record, the machine was in rest for next 5 minutes from when the start button is pressed, then starting the alternative cycle of about 1minutes kneading + 20sec resting.

That cycle continued for the next 15 minutes.

6. 5 minutes after pressing the start button, add the chocolate pieces.

My note:

I was afraid the kneading will stop anytime soon, so I added them 5 min after the start. Because the chocolate pieces were too big, it was hitting the bread pan all kneading phase and I was afraid the chocolate might scratch the surface of the bread pan. But also I read a blog described that adding too small pieces too early caused the dough to become just chocolate dough. I might need to change this to about 10 min after but with slightly smaller pieces.

By the way, some of the added butter stuck at the top of bread pan when I opened and added the chocolate pieces. I pushed them down by finger but I guess it could have dropped eventually?  

7. Add about 2 tsp of honey on the dough in few times after timer goes to 2:14.

My note:

I actually added the honey after the raise started (by 1:28). That appears to me it resulted the dough to not rising as much as it should have been. This must be added at the very end of kneading time

Rise phase started by 2:16-15, then continued until 0:50 (so for 1 hour and 25 minutes).

8. Brash some bit of milk over the surface of dough at 0:50 when the baking phase starts.

9. Press stop button when the complete beep sounds. Take the bread pan out from the BM, take the bread out from the bread pan then put on a wire rack and leave it to cool down. Better not cutting them until the bread is enough cool, takes about 1 hour (depends on the loaf size and the room temperature).

10. Keep it in a plastic bag once the loaf is really cooled down.

My note - observation:
Outside - Added the honey by spoon and the brush of milk made a nice outside texture. The crust was slightly over soft and a bit of care was required to take the bread out from the pan. the crust is enough soft even after cooled down, no burned spot.
Inside - The dough became slightly darker in general by chocolate. The marble is much clear and nicely and thinly layered, it didn't have any big dots of chocolate - which means the timing and the size of adding chocolate was OK.
Taste - It's not enough sweet for us still, the level of salt taste give me the feeling of bread than a brioche. I will try with 5 tbsp sugar and 1/2 salt instead next time. The honey made a better sweeter spots on the top of bread, it might be better adding another 1 tbsp of honey with chocolate too. I guess using regular chocolate rather than the dark chocolate will make it better sweeter taste but then they will melt much earlier and cannot make marble texture.