Chocolate Apricot Sourdough Bread

A friend gave me a sourdough starter recently and I've been trying out all things sourdough. I recently came across this Chocolate Cranberry Sourdough Bread and thought to give it a try.  It was ... lacking.  For one, you might notice that it has no real source of sugar.  Well, cocoa really needs some sweet to give it any flavor.  The bread is also completely lacking oil.  Finally, well, I admit to not liking cranberries so much.  So I tweaked it.

My version is still pretty sour.  I think that is to be expected from sourdough.  If you want to cut it a bit I would use sweeter apricots.  I might also try some dried cherries in the next round.  If you've never worked with sourdough before, I recommend starting with this recipe to get a good understanding of the process.

Chocolate Apricot Sourdough Bread

2 cups dried sour apricots
2 cups orange juice (or water)
1 1/2 cups active sourdough starter

2 cups bread flour

1/2 cup coconut oil (or butter), melted

3/4 cup maple syrup (or honey, or something else sweet)

3/4 cup Dutch process cocoa powder

1 1/2 - 3 cups bread flour

1/2 bag chocolate chips

Directions
The night before:
Boil the apricots in the orange juice for around five minutes.  Drain the apricots reserving 1 1/2 cup juice.  Set aside the apricots until morning.  In a non-metallic bowl mix juice, 2 cups flour, and starter.  Cover and set someplace warm and moist overnight.

In the morning:
Transfer your sponge into your mixing bowl and add oil, syrup, and cocoa.  Mix with your dough hook until consistent.  Add flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is workable but still quite moist.  You don't want to be able to pour your dough, but you don't want it as dry as a traditional yeast bread, either.

Add your apricots and revisit the consistency of your dough.  You may find that with the added moisture in the apricots you need to add a bit more flour. Mix with your dough hook for another 5 minutes.  Add the chocolate chips and mix until they are evenly distributed.

Divide the dough into two parts and place in bread pans for rising.  Once the dough has risen to about double, bake at 425F for 35-50 minutes.

A Bit of Crochet

As Maddy grows a bit older I find that I'm losing my patience for long knitting projects and am more interested in using my yarn stash to make food and amigurumi for her to play with.  With that in mind I have decided to resurrect the crochet hooks and take a second (or third or fourth) go at crochet.

I've found it to be much easier this time around and am having fun with the speed at which the projects are completed.  Right now I am sticking to other folks' patterns so that I can learn some of the art of shaping amigurumi before I branch out into my own designs.

My two recent favorites are a cute little apple by June of Planet June and the Angry Bird Cardinal (pattern link) from Karla of Itsy Bitsy Spider.  What do you think?