Chocolate Coffee Cardamom Bread! (CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED)
Thanksgiving has come and gone too quickly yet again. We have finished eating our Thanksgiving Leftovers Torta, but we’ll continue to hold on to our reasons to stop and give thanks, especially as the holiday madness begins in earnest. We’ve come up with a great way to celebrate the season with you–and they don’t involve turkey or long lines of shoppers–a decadent chocolate bread, laced with coffee, cardamom, and more chocolate!
Let’s start with the bread. The recipe is our Chocolate Espresso Whole Wheat Bread recipe, which comes from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes A Day, but tweaked just a bit, with a swirl of cardamom sugar and chocolate chunks. The combination of chocolate, cardamom, and coffee is quite a treat; the flavors compliment each other beautifully. This bread is rich and dreamy, but the dough is still made with whole wheat flour and honey, adding lots of flavor with less fat than our regular brioche, for example. There is, of course, the coffee icing that covers the top, an added little indulgence for the Holidays.
Chocolate Coffee Cardamom Bread
2 cups whole wheat flour
4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (or two packets)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/4 cup vital wheat gluten
1 cup strong brewed coffee, lukewarm
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water
4 large eggs
1/2 cup neutral-flavored oil
3/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
Whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, yeast, salt, and vital wheat gluten in a 5 quart bowl, or other lidded food container. Combine the liquid ingredients and mix with the dry ingredients without kneading.
The dough will be loose, but will firm up when chilled. Don’t try to use it without chilling at least 2 hours.
Cover the dough, and allow to rest at room temperature until it rises and collapses, about 2 hours. Refrigerate and use over the next 5 days.
On baking day, grease a 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch nonstick loaf pan. Cut off a 2-pound piece of dough and shape into a ball. Generously flour your work surface, and roll the dough into a 1/4 inch rectangle, dusting with flour as needed. Brush the surface of the dough with 2 tablespoons melted butter, and sprinkle the cardamom sugar mixture evenly over the butter. Then sprinkle the chopped chocolate over the sugar mixture. Roll the dough into a cylinder, and pinch the seams shut. Place in the prepared loaf pan, and allow to rest for about an hour and 45 minutes, covered loosely with plastic wrap. (For detailed instructions on rolling out, sprinkling, and rolling up, see Zoe’s post here).
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake bread for 45-50 minutes, until firm. Remove the bread from the pan and drizzle with the coffee icing (recipe follows). Allow to cool before slicing and eating.
Coffee Icing
1 cup powdered sugar
2-3 tablespoons strong coffee
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
Combine powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt together. Add coffee one tablespoon at a time, until desired consistency is reached.
I can’t wait to make this chocolate bread! And the chance to win a set of books, wonderful! Thanks.
This bread looks divine! Plus I would love to win the books! I have the first book on my iPad and I use it all the time, but it’d be great to have paper copies. Plus my son loves the pizza, so a flatbread cookbook sounds awesome.
I also have a question: Do you know anything about New Years Pretzel? My grandma used to bake them every year. A sweet, yeasty bread with walnuts and cherries and frosting. Delicious. (It is apparently a German / Pittsburgh thing, says my googling.)
She passed away some years ago, and we’ve been buying them for New Year’s Eve, only my mom is now allergic to nuts and I’m wondering if I can adapt one of our doughs (the brioche, maybe?) to make a new years pretzel for this holiday.
Please bake up a new year’s pretzel for me and post it to your blog! I would love to have a super tasty one for this holiday.
Thank you!!!
Connie
I’d love to win this set of books. Thanks!
Looks absolutely scrumptious!
What a gorgeous giveaway! Would love to enter.
I made 20 loaves of bread using your basic recipe…for my son’s wedding rehearsal dinner. Everyone loved it. We had a pasta bar so the bread went nicely with all the sauces, salad,etc.
This looks amazing. I absolutely love ally our stuff. I have a container of your dough always in my fridge. Thank you so much.
Nice recipe! Chocolate and cardamom sounds like an interesting combination.
I’m not big on coffee flavor in my chocolate items because I always only taste the chocolate! However, I use your recipes numerous other times. So far, I’ve made more recipes from the Pizza in 5 than anything else (although the WW Brioche made a seriously good french toast a couple of months back) – I use KAF’s Italian Style Flour and Pizza Dough Flavoring. It’s made homemade pizza a regular thing at my house 🙂
Thanks for the giveaway and good luck to everyone!! 🙂
Wife and I do not care for coffee flavor in anything except, well, coffee. Bread looks yummy though but would need to sub (or delete) the coffee.
Your way of making bread has changed our lives. Thanks so much!!!
This looks great! I’ve been waiting to try making this chocolate espresso bread. Now is the time!
This looks delish! Can’t wait to try it.
I LOVE 5 minutes a day, I can’t wait to try your other books! It’s great to do your recipes while working and in grad school, especially with all the soup we eat.
I have the Artisanal Bread in 5 Minutes book and would love to win the others! I often make a big batch of pizza dough from that book, so would be interested to see the recipes in the Pizza book, as well as the whole grain breads in the other. 🙂
I’ve been making pizzas and flatbreads a few times a week since picking up your book last Summer. Lately I’ve been doing a mozzarella, basil, and thinly sliced lemon pizza which has been delicious!
This is a no brainer for me!! All my favorite “favors” all baked up in one!! Going to make !! Thanks for the chance for your book(s) giveaway!!
OMG a bread that doubles as dessert! Thanks for the giveaway.
I’d love to win this book set!
I’d love to enter the contest – and I love how you’re using whole wheat flour for desserts, my favorite flour is whole wheat pastry flour – it’s rather healthy and similar in texture to white flour.
This actually looks like a great bread to try out over winter break, I’ll just have to veganize it first haha.
Thanks!
I would have never thought to combine the three in a yeast bread. Thanks! This will be a Christmas brunch treat! While coffee always complements chocolate (so seamlessly that people have to ask how I make my chocolate goodies so rich), the cardamom swirl and coffee icing surely set this off and bring it to another level.
Thanks again!
The recipe looks like a perfect addition on Christmas morning. Thanks! I would love to win your books.
That bread looks amazing!
Thank you so much for introducing us to the best and easiest bread ever. You have drastically changed the way we cook and eat!
That looks yummy!
Thanks for the recipe. I told my niece about your bread recipes and now she is going to try them!
I LOVE your bread! We’ve been eating it here every day for about 4 years now. You do such a wonderful job : )
I have not ventured away from the Master recipe yet. This sweet bread looks amazing and should be a hit this season. Thanks for sharing!
That looks delicious. I love how your recipes make it easy to bake bread for family events.
I just want to tell you how much I enjoy your books and recipes! I have been baking my way through your first book – and am up to the beignets 🙂 I have always been kitchen-challenged – and with your help – am now known as a breadmaker 🙂 People call ME when they want bread at an event… LOL!! Thank you so much – it is your wonderful recipes and easy techniques that have enabled me to learn!
Looks wonderful!! I will have to try it.
I often say to my husband “I could live on fresh baked bread alone !” I’d love to have a set of your delicious books. Have a great day and may God bless you and all you love.
I can’t believe I just found this website! I have a lot of catching up to do.
I would love to win your books! I have made many of your recipes and I am a huge fan!
Your method has given me back the ability to bake bread regularly for the first time in about 8 years, and I am sharing my joy with friends by sending them home with bread at least twice per week. Thank you thank you thank you!
Looks like a great prize!
I will definitely try this recipe. It looks delicious!
I’ve made banana bread, cranberry bread, zucchini bread… never thought of chocolate bread. Will have to bake this soon.
I love how coffee brings out the intensity of the chocolate flavor! The Chocolate Espresso Whole Wheat Bread is on my list of items to include in our Christmas baskets — cannot wait to try it out with the delicious variation you provided here!
I really want to try making this bread instead of just dreaming about making all of your breads.
Love, love, love your books!!! Cannot wait to try this bread!
Looks great. Have your first book and would love the other two. Know plenty of people who I could re-gift the first book to.
Love making your breads! My stepson announced he wants to start making his own bread and I’d love to give him his own copy of your books to show him how easy it can be. If I win I can buy him a good oven stone and peel to go with.
I’m just starting to look for holiday potluck-appropriate breads and this looks like a winner. How can you go wrong with bread AND chocolate?
We make pizza every week using a olive oil wheat dough and now that it’s cool enough in Louisiana to justify turning the oven on for bread, I’m testing out one of the sandwich dough recipes to see if it passes muster for my husband’s daily lunch sandwich.
Thank you for all the wonderful recipes.
I just came to your site for the first time today, having recently hearing about your book. That bread looks amazing and right up my alley – to say I am a coffee lover is an understatement. Fingers crossed for the book giveaway, too!
This bread has so many scrumptious (and many of my favorite) flavors: chocolate, coffee, and cardamom all together – WOW! I have to try that. I would love to win your autographed books, too!
The bread looks and sounds delicious. Very excited to try it over Christmas vacation. I’m a teacher and can’t even thinking about trying something new at this time of the year. Once vacation starts, I will have the luxury of cooking, baking and eating well.
This looks gorgeous!!! How do you think it would work as a pastry filled with almond pastry cream, sort of like your sunny side up apricot thing, but without fruit?
This looks even more yummy than the original recipe! I can’t wait to try it and to share your recipe books with friends too. They’ll be Christmas gifts if I win!
LOVE the idea of this bread!!!! You had me at cardamom. And your bread have become a holiday go-to for me. Last year’s gifts were your pannetone! Can’t wait to see what you come up with next.