Chocolate Strawberry Bread ......sinfully rich and decadent

Made these along with the batch of Mexican breads for my other half's sales team last week since they would normally stay back to work overtime during the closing week of each month. Making almost 40 buns and a batch of 20 light cheese cupcakes for the team as overtime snacks.

Indonesians love cheesey or chocolate flavored in their desserts. This could be easily observed from  the pastries and cakes sold all over the country. I am more of a fan towards coffee or mocha flavored desserts than chocolate or cheese flavored ones.  Last year when I randomly went around the neighborhood bakeries looking for coffee cake but only managed to get something close ie. Vanilla sponge cake with coffee buttercream. This is after going through several bakeries.

I still have leftover chocolate ganache from the recent strawberry chocolate chiffon cake hence I decided to use it on coating the bread as well. As expected, the bread were all taken up within minutes.

Recipe as follows......

Chocolate Strawberry Bread

Ingredients

(A)

200g Milk Water
50g Strawberry Puree 
330g Bread Flour
70g Cake Flour
70g Castor Sugar

4g Salt
1 Grade A Egg

(B)

40g Unsalted Butter

(C) Glazing / Ganache
100g Dark Chocolate (chopped)
100g Milk Chocolate (chopped)
100g Whipping Cream

(D)
Chocolate Rice

Method

Combine all the ingredients (A) into the bowl of a stand mixer with dough hook and mix with lower speed until all ingredients are well combined.

Add (B) butter and continue using the mixer to knead with medium speed for another 15-20 mins. Once you are able to stretch the dough to a thin membrane before breaking, it is considered ready for proofing. 

Transfer the dough to a slightly greased bowl, cover bowl with either cling wrap or cloth. Allow the covered dough to proof in a warm place (under 28 celsius degrees)  for 1-2 hours or until doubled in size. 

Test the readiness of the dough with a finger lightly dusted with low gluten or cake flour. The dough is ready when the dough remain indented after the finger pokes into it.

Punch down the dough. Divide dough into 10-12 equal portions and mould it round. Let it rest for another 10 mins.

Round out each portions into round balls and tuck the ends down. Arrange each dough on baking mats / muffin cups with liners accordingly. Lightly cover the dough with cling wrap and prepare the dough for the second proofing for 1 to 1-1/2 hrs or until double in size.

Preheat the oven to 185C degrees 20 minutes before baking. 

Bake in the middle rack at 185C degrees for 14-15mins.

(Chocolate Glaze / Ganache)

Place a heatproof saucepan over medium low heat for a few minutes. Remove saucepan from heat when the cream is about to simmer.  Add the chopped chocolate into the cream
mixture and gently stir a spatula or wooden spoon to distribute the chocolate through the cream until the mixture melted and turn creamy.

Allow the chocolate ganache to cool and thicken to spreadable consistency before using. 

Make sure the bread has completely cooled down before applying chocolate glazing and  topping.