Chocolate Cream Cheese Bread - to all the fussy eaters out there

FUSSY EATER (George Carlin)
I was what my parents used to call a fussy eater, which is, of course, a euphemism for big pain in the ass... I would say "I don't like that.  Did you make that? Is there a picture of it in the cookbook? I bet it don't look like that!"


I was certainly a fussy eater for a couple of what must have been frustrating years to my parents.  All I would eat was peanut butter and jelly and cheerios.  I have a feeling even my fussy eater self all those years ago would've put down a good amount of this bread.  Chocolate Cream Cheese Bread is by far the most well-loved recipe I have ever baked.  My friend Jill (she loves books like I love bread  http://abookofadifferentcolor.blogspot.com/) gave me my first bread book and this was the first recipe I made out of it.

I have probably made this recipe at least two dozen times since, and because I opened my big mouth at work  and people wanted something to try...I went back to it.

LOGIC
"How do you know you don't like it?"  They wanted reasons.  Sometimes you don't always have a reason.  "I know I don't like it, and if I ate it I'd like it even less.  You like it? YOU eat it." - George Carlin

The downside to chocolate cream cheese bread is that it is very hard to get to present correctly.  The recipe calls for folding and joining strips of dough across the top (pictured below)  and the problem is the dough doesn't always meld and then the bread looks like an alien chest-buster just exploded out of it (but still tastes delicious - the bread, not an alien chest-buster thing, come on now).  Fortunately after two dozen attempts or so I figured out that gently wetting the ends of the strips with a little water almost always prevents this!  I know I know, after twenty some odd times I finally catch on?  I'm not as clever as I look sometimes.

Fortunately with this bread recipe I don't need to be clever - I mean its got cream cheese in the dough.  

And to add to the Video Techniques section (the videos are ready I'm just having trouble converting them to mpeg format and posting them) I'm going to start  How Do They Do That and Troubleshooting your Breadmachine pages as well.  More posts and page updates to follow!