Mini chocolate baguettes

One of the snacks from my childhood (and adolescence!) that I remember most fondly was the bread with chocolate. A few squares with a piece of bread made me the happiest girl in the world. That bread tasted like heaven to me, and as for the chocolate! With the recipe for these mini chocolate baguette we’ll turn that fantastic duo into a single piece, which will delight everyone at home at snack time or for breakfast.

These mini baguettes are inspired by a classic of French baking: the "pain au chocolat" or "chocolatine", a flaky dough similar to croissant dough, which is cut into a rectangle and filled with two sticks of dark chocolate. A real treat, any time of day!

In this recipe, you'll see that the method is very simple, since what we'll do is a bread dough which we will divide into portions, to shape them into mini baguettes and fill them with the chocolate. The real challenge of this preparation is wait for the rolls to cool to sink your teeth into them and savor the chocolate.

Will you join me in making the afternoon snack? Let's get to the recipe!

Ingredients

• 5 g of baker's yeast
• 250 ml of warm water
• 360 g of flour
• 5 g of salt
• 12 fine dark chocolate bars (minimum 50% cocoa)*

*You can use chocolate chips or, if you can't find thin bars, cut two or three chocolate bars lengthwise.

Preparation

1. In a bowl, put the yeast in the warm water and stir gently. Let it rest for 5 minutes.
2. Next, add the flour and salt and mix with a spatula until you have a ball of dough.
3. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let the dough ferment for 1 hour and 15 minutes inside the oven. Place a Shallow Casserole filled with hot water on the bottom of the oven.
4. Take the dough out of the oven and sprinkle a little flour over a work surface. Divide the dough into 6 equal parts and roll them out.
5. Preheat the oven to 240 °C.
6. Shape the mini baguettes: give each piece a slightly elongated, flat shape and place the 2 chocolate sticks in each one. Roll them up into a bar shape.
7. Put the rolls in the perforated baguette tray and sprinkle a little flour on top. Make two cuts in each mini baguette with a bread scoring blade or a very sharp knife.
8. Bake the rolls for 30 minutes at 240 °C, placing a baking tray with water on the bottom of the oven during baking.
9. Once the time has elapsed, remove the chocolate mini baguettes from the oven and let them cool before taking the first bite.

Notes

• If you want a sweeter version of "pain au chocolat" closer to brioche, you can find on the blog the recipe for the Vienna baguettes with chocolate chips.
• As I note in the ingredients, if you can't find thin chocolate bars, you can cut two or three bars lengthwise or chop the squares and place them in the mini baguettes.