White Chocolate Club Med Bread

For some reason, when I made this wondrous bread for the beta testing, I didn't focus on the fact that it was a  "Club Med" bread.  According to Google, the Club Med breads are quite famous, and most famous of all is the White Chocolate Bread.  The recipe, along with a YouTube video, is available on the net.  Not surprisingly, the original bread is considerably easier to make than Rose's, and the Club Med people don't mind in the slightest that the white chocolate chips (yes, chips) are dark to the point of being burned on the outside.  I may try the original sometime, just to compare, although it looks like the breads are so different that it would be difficult to compare them meaningfully.

Mixing the bread is pretty easy, once the sponge has bubbled and risen, but it takes quite a while in the KitchenAid to get it to this consistency.  I hate to think how long I'd have to knead it by hand.

I still had a lot of Valrhona white chocolate that Woody brought when he was here last summer.  I used all of the remaining block chocolate.  I'll bet the Club Med bakers don't use Valrhona white chocolate chips.  I don't think Valrhona makes white chocolate chips, but anything is possible.

I got a new measuring tape because Jim keeps accusing me of stealing his.  How was I to know that we have his and hers measuring tapes?  Although the dough is sticky, it was pretty easy to roll out.

Lots of white chocolate.  I used to love fake white chocolate.  Now it tastes awful.  Sometimes I'm sad that my taste buds have become more refined.

This is where Rose's bread is dramatically different than the official Club Med bread:  it has an outside layer of plain white bread dough to keep the encased white chocolate-studded dough from being exposed to direct heat.  The directions are kind of like written directions for tying your shoes--it's an easy process but difficult to figure out from the instructions.  At least it was hard for me, until suddenly it became obvious.

My dough over-rose.  I don't think there is such a word, but that's what it did.  I proofed the dough in my oven at 85 degrees.  It's a pretty nice feature, but I don't always remember to compensate for the fact that 85 is considerably warmer than my kitchen's room temperature on a brisk fall day.  The dough was already more than an inch higher than the top of the loaf pan when I took it out of the oven in order to preheat the oven.

Consequently, the bread was too high and it collapsed in one corner.  Not this corner--Jim always tries to hide my errors with his camera angles, and I always confess.  But it's just as well you can't see how goofy the loaf looked.

The crumb is not perfect.  It still tastes good, though.  Jim and I ate most of this at one or two sittings; then I sliced and froze the rest of it.  It's a little delicate for the toaster--I was afraid it was going to fall apart or the white chocolate bits would burn.  But neither fear was realized, and I think it tasted even better toasted.