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This Sourdough Chocolate Bread with Pecans will guaranteed knock your socks off! You can decide if you want to have them for a Sweet Breakfast with strawberry jam, for a Healthy Snack topped with Crème Fraîche or for an Indulgent dessert with whipped cream, pinch of cocoa powder and icing sugar.
At the moment I am pregnant with our 5th baby and I am getting concerned that I might be addicted to chocolate. I make EVERYTHING chocolate! But then again, I remember that this Sourdough Chocolate Bread with Pecans is HEALTHY! It is Sourdough, thus it consumes (some) of the sugar added and I use dark chocolate. Plus, there are nuts in, so there is no reason to feel guilty. Except if you eat half the bread by yourself (Oops!).
Recently I actually went so far as to make this my birthday cake (bread). It was a total hit! I made an ‘icing’ spread with cream, a little cocoa powder and icing sugar, and it makes a perfect combination with the slight bitterness from the bread. Then I also experimented with making portion sized buns instead of one large bread; they baked a lot shorter but came out perfectly soft. The perfect ‘bun’ for a Saturday or Sunday morning breakfast with jam or crème fraîche.
Sourdough terminology
- Sourdough: Fermented dough using a sourdough starter and unbleached stone ground flour. Through the process of fermentation the live bacteria and yeast in the starter will digest the proteins in the flour and excrete carbon dioxide that causes dough to rise.
- Sourdough starter: A live culture that consists of wild yeast in the air and friendly bacteria in flour, on counter tops and on hands, that live in a symbiotic relationship.
- Autolyse: The process of combining flour and water and letting the flour absorb the water and let gluten develop naturally through the use of time.
- Stretch and fold: A technique used with wetter dough instead of kneading by stretching the dough and folding it on top of itself to 4 sides to achieve gluten development.
- Coil fold: Same as with stretch and fold, this technique is a little gentler on the dough and works well for the last few ‘sessions’ of working the dough to achieve gluten development. With this technique you put your hands under the dough and roll it onto itself in all 4 directions.
- Bakers percentage: This sounds complicated to learn, but once understood it helps to scale any recipe up or down very easily. No matter the grams, you always see the flour amount as 100% and measure all the other ingredients according to that.
For a more expansive list of sourdough terms, you can read more here.
Sourdough Benefits
- Rich in nutrients
- Less likely to spike blood sugar
- Low amounts of gluten
- Generally easier to digest than bread baked with bakers yeast
- Usually made with unbleached flour
- Provides healthy bacteria
- No preservatives
- Divine taste!
Why add Oil?
This is one of my very best tricks. When I started baking sourdough for friends and family, everyone was ecstatic about the bread, the taste, the texture it was all a dream come true. Except. The crust. It was a pain to cut, and small children and older people struggled to bite and chew it. So, after much research and experiments, I came to the solution to just add a little oil to the dough and it solved the problem! I could still get a nice crunchy crust, but not having it so thick that it was inconvenient to cut, bite, or chew. Win for everyone!
Tips for working and baking with Sourdough
- Temperature can change everything. Anything under 20°C and your dough will practically come to a standstill. So try and stay around 28-30°C, that is the sweet-spot for rising dough.
- Add just a little oil to the dough for a more manageable crust.
- Wet your hands! To keep the dough from sticking to your hands when handling the dough, just wet your hands every time before touching the dough.
- You can play around with starter amounts in the dough, just keep a close eye on it when you add around 100g starter per 500g flour and live in a warm and humid climate.
- Inclusions can be added at three different times and with different methods.
- 1) With second mix, just add inclusions and mix with everything else into the dough, this might seem to tear the dough and gluten might take a little extra time to develop, but in my experience it still comes together at the end.
- 2) With 3 or 4 Stretch and fold. Just add inclusions and carefully continue with stretch and fold.
- 3) With the very last time to stretch the dough you can laminate the inclusions into the dough. Wet your counter top and place dough on counter. Wet your hands and gently start stretching the dough as thin as possible without tearing. When you can almost see through the dough you can sprinkle your inclusions evenly on top. Fold 1/3 from left to right. Fold right over left. Roll dough from top to bottom, and your inclusions will be perfectly distributed.
Variations of inclusions for Sourdough Bread
- Cheesy Cheddar Sourdough Bread
- Sourdough Olive and Roasted Garlic Bread
- Sourdough Jalapeno and Cheddar Bread
- Sourdough Cranberry and Pecan Bread
Sourdough Chocolate Bread With Pecans Recipe
- 365g Water
- 463g Unbleached White Bread Flour
- 50g Cocoa Powder (sifted)
- 50g Sugar
- 50g Active Sourdough Starter
- 10g Non-iodised Salt
- 25g Unflavoured oil like Coconut oil (melted)
- Inclusions:
- 100g Roughly chopped dark chocolate
- 100g Soaked and chopped pecan nuts
Sourdough Chocolate Bread With Pecans Instructions
- Mix flour, sifted cocoa powder and water until just combined and no more flour is visible and leave to autolyse for 20min to 2hours.
- Add all of the rest of the ingredients and mix until all the oil is absorbed.
- Wait 15min and do Stretch and fold 1.
- Wait 15min do Stretch and fold 2.
- Wait 15min, add inclusions (chocolate and pecans) and do Stretch and fold 3.
- Wait 30min do first Coil fold.
- Wait 30min and do last Coil fold.
- Bulk rise until bubbles is visible on the top of the dough and it has visibly risen.
- Dump out on clean counter, flour the top of the dough lightly, divide and pre-shape into balls.
- Rest for 15min, final shape and put upside down into prepared proofing bowl, lined with a cloth and dusted with rice flour.
- Cold retard over night in the fridge.
NEXT DAY
- Preheat oven and dutch oven to 250°C (480°F), about 45min.
- Turn dough out onto baking paper, score and put carefully into preheated dutch oven, with the baking paper.
- Bake for 30min with lid on, 15min without lid.
- Carefully remove and put on cooling rack.
- For best texture wait at least 1 hour before slicing.
Enjoy!
Toppings that goes super well with this Sourdough Chocolate Bread With Pecans
- Créme fraîche (or sour cream).
- Strawberry jam.
- Any type of nut butter.
- 250g Heavy whipping cream, whipped to soft peaks then add 1/8 cup powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon sifted cocoa powder. (My personal favourite!)
Make it buns! – Sourdough Chocolate Bread With Pecans
When shaping, divide each bread dough into 12 bun rolls (about 100g each), shape and put upside down into jumbo sized muffin tins lined with cloth and dusted with rice flour. On bake day, bake at 200°C (400°F) on a parchment lined cookie sheet for 25-30min or until sounding hollow when thumbed on the bottom.
Sourdough Chocolate Bread With Pecans
This Sourdough Chocolate Bread with Pecans will guarantee knock your socks off! You can decide if you want to have them for a Sweet Breakfast with strawberry jam, for a Healthy Snack topped with Creme Fraiche or for an Indulgent dessert with whipped cream, pinch of cocoa powder and icing sugar.
Ingredients
- 365g Water
- 463g Unbleached White Bread Flour
- 50g Cocoa Powder (sifted)
- 50g Sugar
- 50g Active Sourdough Starter
- 10g Non-iodised Salt
- 25g Unflavoured oil like Coconut oil (melted)
- Inclusions:
- 100g Roughly chopped dark chocolate
- 100g Soaked and chopped pecan nuts
Instructions
- Mix flour, sifted cocoa powder and water until just combined and no more flour is visible to autolyse for 20min to 2hours.
- Add all of the rest of the ingredients and mix until al the oil is absorbed.
- Wait 15min and do Stretch and fold 1
- Wait 15min and do Stretch and fold 2
- Wait 15min and inclusions (chocolate and pecans) and do Stretcha and fold 3
- Wait 30min and do Coil fold
- Wait 30min and do last Coil fold
- Bulk rise until bubbles is visible on the top of the dough and it has visibly risen.
- Dump out on clean counter, flour the top of the dough lightly, divide and pre-shape into balls.
- Rest for 15min, final shape and put upside down into prepared proofing bowl, lined with a cloth and dusted with rice flour.
- Cold retard over night in the fridge.
- Preheat oven and dutch oven to 250°C (480°F), about 45min.
- Turn dough out onto baking paper, score and put carefully into preheated dutch oven, with the baking paper.
- Bake for 30min with lid on, 15min without lid.
- Carefully remove and put on cooling rack.
- For best texture wait at least 1 hour before slicing.
- Enjoy!
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My favourite Sourdough gadgets
Cast iron dutch oven
Sourdough kit
Kitchen scale
Infra-red thermometer
More Sourdough Recipes To Look At
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