The Easiest No-Knead Chocolate Bread Recipe

Bold Bakers I'm about to blow your mind with this recipe for a no need chocolate bread. It is so decadent, easy to make, and it is incredible fresh from the oven. And we're going to start out by making our dough. It's a no need dough, like I said, so there's no need for a stand mixer or a bread machine. We're just going to mix it all by hand. So first things first, bread flour. Now for this recipe, I don't want you to use all purpose flour. I do want you to use bread flour. It has higher protein around 11 to 13%. That extra protein will make the bread chewier. So it just, it really yields you a much nicer bread. Without it, the bread can kind of just rip apart and you don't get that lovely kind of snap and chew that we're used to like from baguettes and like big, you know, bulls. So next up is cocoa powder. Now my preference here is Dutch process. I'll tell you why it's not as bitter and it is a little bit smoother and it's like kind of almost like a more concentrated, like richer chocolate flavor. And please buy good quality. There's Rodel Ghirardelli and really makes all the difference. Like if we're making a chocolate bread, you want to make sure you're using your best chocolate. If you don't have Dutch process, you can use just regular cocoa powder. Next up is our yeast. This is like I said, a no need, yeasted bread. What I like to use with regards to yeast is instant yeast because you just add it straight in there to the dry ingredients. There is no need for sponging in warm water. If you only have active yeast, then I'm going to put a note on biggerbolderbaking.com where this written recipe can be found on how you can use active yeast in this recipe. Just a rule of thumb, I always use instant yeast. I just find it so much easier to use. Next up, a little bit of sugar to balance out the bitterness of the chocolate, help the yeast grow and just sweeten up our bread a little bit. Beautiful. Just regular granulated sugar. And of course, salt. Salt is so important in our baking. If you're watching biggerbolder baking for over 10 years, you will know that at this stage. So a good generous sprinkling of salt. Plus, salt is the perfect accompaniment when it comes to chocolate. It just really enhances the flavor and kind of has you coming back for more. Now I'm just going to mix those dry ingredients together. So next thing I'm going to add are chocolate chips. Now let me tell you about these chocolate chips. I use Ghirardelli. These are really good quality. They're bittersweet. So they have more chocolate and less sugar added. I definitely recommend bittersweet. You can also use semisweet if you want to, which are a little bit more milky. Please use good quality. It's well worth it. The reason I use chips in this bread and not chopped chocolate like I often do in my recipes, and I know that I did create a TikTok giving out about chocolate chips. Do not use chocolate chips, but I don't want the chocolate to melt in this. The thing about the chips is that they will hold their structure and they won't pour out in the bread. So I want them to be like lumps of chocolate throughout the bed. So that's why I'm using these. So scatter those in there. Yummy, yummy. So now when I was researching this recipe, I really put a lot of salt into it. Like what are the best ingredients to put in? Like how can I just make the flavor like the best possible? So I decided to add in a little bit of olive oil into the dough. Olive oil is great in bread making, but olive oil also has a lot of flavor. It's salty. It's kind of nutty. It's fatty. Like you're getting all of these things in your bread. So like it's actually kind of like a secret weapon. I use it a lot in my baking. You might not have noticed I have it in my cookie dough recipe, which is one of my favorite recipes. I put it in my pistachio gelato. I have a chocolate mousse that I have, um, olive oil in there. So many ways I can compliment your baking just with all that lovely flavor. And as always, please use the good quality stuff. Please do not substitute this with vegetable oil or canola oil. I beg you. Okay. Next up, water. lukewarm water. Help the yeast to grow, to move, to proof. So the beauty of this recipe is no machine needed. So I have my spatula and I'm just going to mix it together with my hands. What I really like to do when it comes to no need doughs is actually put down the spatula and go in with my hands because then I can feel the exact amount of moisture. We just want to add enough water until our dough comes together to form a ball. We don't want it to be a soggy wet dough. It is high hydration, but we don't want it to be a doughy mess. Okay, lovely. So this is the texture that we're going for. So that's how simple it is to form this dough. Two minutes by hand. Now here's what we do. Cover it tightly in cling wrap, letting no air get at that dough. Put an extra clean tea towel on top for snugness. Now here's what we do. If you've never made a no need dough before, what you do is you ferment this dough. So rather than putting on a machine and then working the machine and working the dough, we're going to use time to help develop the gluten. Over time, we're going to give it 12 to 18 hours. Over this period, it will strengthen the gluten. Bubbles will develop. It will grow. It'll get stronger. We'll also develop flavor and the texture of the bread. So the longer you give this, the better. So a minimum of 12 hours, but I like to go up to almost 18 hours to really get an amazing dough. So set it over to the side at room temperature. We always make this the day before and then we'll come back and check it out. So like any good cooking show, here's a dough I made yesterday. I want you to take a look at this. So come here to me, get a good look at this dough. This is what fermented doughs look like. They're really bubbly. They're jiggly. They do smell a little bit boozy. And when I first started making these, I was like, Oh my gosh, it's gone bad. Like years ago when I was a teenager. And then I realized that's not a bad smell. That's flavor. That is a fermented dough. It's saltiness. It's nuttiness. Like this is exactly what we want. So this dough is ready to be shaped and put into our cast iron pot. So I'm going to flare my surface here. This can be a bit of a sticky job. And I'm going to turn my dough out onto my countertop. So if you watch a lot of my other bread videos, you will have seen me do this technique before. I'm going to pull and stretch the dough four ways, like this, pull it from the outside, pull it into the center, and I keep going until it gets nice and firm. Now this is another form of needing just like this. And you might think like, well, do I want to do that? Cause I'm knocking out all the air that you created over the 12 hours. And like, yes, you are. That's true. But you're not weakening the dough. You're strengthening the dough so it can capture even bigger bubbles. Let me proof it next because it's going to develop gases over the next hour plus of proofing. And we want a strong bread to be able to trap those gases. And that's what we're doing here. There we go. You'll feel it tighten up. You'll feel it get smooth. It's instantly not as wet as what it was. And then I turn it over. I do a little booly booly, which is just pull it together nice and tight. Put a little bit of flour on there. I like to get some flour on the surface of my bread before I bake it. It makes it easier to score just like that. Beautiful. Lovely. Dutch oven. I've been using a Dutch oven for many years to make bread. It is the best technique I have found. Dutch ovens can be very expensive, so I will tell you places like Ross, TJ Maxx, Marshalls. Those are really great places to pick them up cheap. Pop it in there. Seam side down into your pot. So if you don't have a Dutch oven, don't worry. You can actually create the same thing by putting a metal bowl over the top. And I'm going to put all that information on the website posts. If you do bake it with no bowl over top and you can put a little bit of water in the oven, it does end up getting quite a, you know, a firm crust, but that's okay too. So there we go. So I'm going to put the lid on our lovely dough. It's going to sit there for around 70 to 90 minutes or so. It's going to proof in there. Over time, it's going to develop more bubbles and all those lovely things. Then we're going to come back. We're going to score it. We're going to get it into the oven. So now come here to me. I want you to look at this. This is when our bread is proved. As you can see, it has grown a lot. And if you push your finger into it and it doesn't bounce back, that means it has proofed enough. If it does bounce back, then it needs a little bit more time proofing, but this looks good. So what I'm going to do now is take my blade. I'm going to score it, put the lid back on, and then it's ready to go straight into the oven. So follow me. So we're going to bake our bread in a hot oven, 450 degrees Fahrenheit, 225 degrees Celsius with the lid on for 20 minutes. To the 20 minutes, remove the lid, bake it with no lid for remaining around 25 minutes or so. We want to use that time there to get the crust nice and firm. My kitchen smells like a bread shop. My timer went off. So let's check on our bread. Because it is a dark dough, it might be a little bit tricky to tell how it's done, but just push it and it should be firm. And if you turn it over, it will sound hollow underneath. Once your bread is out of the oven, do give it some cooling downtime because it'll make it easier to cut. I also like to eat it when it's warm, so I'm going to slice mine now. Because of the fermentation, this dough is incredibly soft. Just look at how springy and spongy it is. This bread does not hang around long. Eat it while it's still fresh in the same day. What I like to do to be a little bit extra is spread some butter on top and eat it as is. This bread is the ultimate in decadence and I hope you get a chance to try it. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any upcoming videos, and I'll see you back here again really soon.