No Knead Chocolate Creamcheese brioche

Is writer's block a real thing? I don't know since I am no writer. Do artists have their blocks too? Could be. I have not been able to bring myself to blog for the past few days. Did I stop cooking/Baking? Definitely not. I just didn't feel like taking pictures and writing about the awesome food I made. Don't know why.

Here is a brioche recipe that involves no kneading. Inspired from 'Artisan Bread in Five minutes' book. There is quite a bit of change in this recipe since I used cream cheese instead of butter. If using butter, use 6 TBSP for this recipe in place of cream cheese. You might want to start with 1/4 cup less flour in that case since cream cheese has lot of water content. One major difference between traditional brioche recipes and this one apart from the 'No knead' thing is - this is not very sweet. Imagine the whole recipe to have just 2 TBSP of honey. That is not sweet and this definitely needs some sweet topping to go with. I would think this makes a great breakfast bread.

One year back - Yeast Bread Baking Tips
Two years back - Sprouted Moong Salad
Ingredients:
All purpose flour - 2 cups
Cocoa - 1/4 cup (I used dutch processed cocoa)
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Instant yeast - 1 tsp
Honey - 2 TBSP
Cream cheese - 4 Oz (half of 8 Oz block) at room temperature
Eggs - 2 large slightly beaten
Water - 6 TBSP

Method:
In a microwave safe bowl, take cream cheese, water, honey and microwave till the mixture is luke warm. Add beaten eggs and stir with a wooden spoon. Add salt, yeast, cocoa powder and stir. Finally, add flour and keep stirring with the spoon till everything is mixed well. Cover loosely and let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours. Since it is very cold here, I almost let it sit for 3 hours.
Refrigerate the dough until well chilled. This dough cannot be handled as is. You can even leave it in the refrigerator for 3 days or freeze the dough.
When ready to bake, remove from the refrigerator and with lightly greased hands, shape into a log. You can fit this in a 9 X 5 pan or use 4 mini loaf pans as I did. You could also make 10 - 12 rolls from this dough using a muffin pan.
Grease the pan with vegetable oil spray and push the dough smoothing it with your hands. Let it rest at room temperature covered for an hour to two hours. I left it for almost 2 1/2 hours since it is very cold here. Dough doesn't become double in volume but will rise very slightly.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Bake for 25 - 28 minutes in case of mini loaves and 40 - 50 minutes in case of a big loaf pan. Bottom should sound hollow when tapped when done or the internal temperature should be 180 - 190 F. Cool in the pan for few minutes and then turn on to the wire rack to cool completely.


This is not a very sweet bread like the traditional brioche. You will definitely need some spread to make it sweet.