8 Bars Sure to Please Bread & Chocolate Lovers
One is considered a necessity and the other a luxury, but the combination of chocolate and bread has been a match made in culinary heaven since time immemorial, and a popular children’s snack in places like France and Italy. Now, craft chocolate makers are taking this perfect pairing to a new level with creative chocolate treats that incorporate bread.
Some bean-to-bar chocolate makers are experimenting with techniques of using dried breadcrumbs in the chocolate-making process right alongside the cacao beans. Others are incorporating bread products into finished chocolate to highlight unique, engaging textures and flavor pairings. With the bakery world as varied and nuanced as the cacao bean itself, there’s always something new to discover.
Let’s dive into some of the chocolate makers using bread in creative new ways.
Pump Street Chocolate
Pump Street Chocolate and Bakery may have kicked off a worldwide trend when they combined two great loves into one fresh business model. Father-daughter team Chris and Joanna Brennan opened up their Suffolk bakery in 2010. Two years later, they began incorporating small-batch handmade chocolate into their offerings. By 2017, it had grown so popular that they moved their chocolate workshop to a larger space, where they’re still producing with a small team of chocolate makers today.
The team holds true to its roots by not only making fresh sourdough loaves daily, but by incorporating their bakery products into a whole range of craft chocolate bars! Bars include Rue Crumb, Milk & Sea Salt, Sourdough & Sea Salt, and Hot Cross Bun, for an unique and indulgent treat, try their single-origin Ecuadorian 40% white chocolate with brown bread. Even more exceptionally, Pump Street Chocolate presses their own cocoa butter to make their white chocolate, rather than outsourcing like most chocolate makers do.
Theo Bread & Chocolate
Theo Chocolate
A pioneer of independent craft chocolate, Theo Chocolate Company has been producing chocolate with an emphasis on sustainability and fair-trade practices in Seattle since 2005.
In the interest of highlighting small-scale craftspeople, the innocuously named bread & chocolate bar features organic sourdough from Essential Baking, an artisan craft bakery also based in Seattle, mixed with Italian sea salt and 70% dark chocolate.
This bar blends shopping local with supporting cacao farms around the globe. And what’s almost as cool as the bar itself is Theo’s new, entirely plant-based packaging.
Mason & Co
Leaping from Seattle to India, Mason & Co presents another treat for the sourdough lovers: their 70% dark sourdough and sea salt bar. Mason & Co is a bean to bar producer based in Tamil Nadu; their cacao is sourced locally and directly from farmers in India and they strive to use organic ingredients whenever possible. In this bar they use house-made sourdough bread crumbs —a true loaf-to-bar experience.
Puchero
Spanish roastery Puchero began their journey with specialty coffee before expanding into the exciting world of craft chocolate. They’ve experimented with bread and bakery items in a few of their chocolate bars; one great example is their 48% milk chocolate bar with butter croissant.
Alongside their single-plantation Dominican Republic cacao, you get a double hit of croissant-ly goodness: they use a local bakery’s croissants right in the grinder during the manufacturing process, and even more buttery croissant flakes garnishing the finished bar.
Hogarth
In New Zealand, Hogarth Chocolate isn’t messing around with their 48% buttered toast and sea salt bar milk chocolate bar. They use toasted rye bread for extra heartiness and highlight rare Arriba Nacional cacao from a select region in Ecuador. Their bread is also sourced locally from New Zealand bakery Vogels. Just for fun, Hogarth’s packaging is nautically inspired to reflect the journey the cacao takes across the sea.
Potomac
A tiny chocolate factory that’s big on flavour, Virginia-based Potomac Chocolate loves experimentation (and a good pun). Their 70% dark chocolate “You Bread My Mind” bar combines a love of home baking with cacao beans from the Dominican Republic. They tested varying proportions, ingredients, and production methods to create the best sourdough and dark chocolate bar possible and settled on toasted bread from the whole loaf, with a hint of salt.
Baron Hassellhoff's
Celebrating the art of breakfast in all its glory, Baron Hasselhoff’s has created “Le Breakfast Bar,” guest starring coffee and croissants alongside their direct-trade cacao beans. Another New Zealander on this list, Baron Hasselhoff’s 50% milk chocolate bar uses cacao beans from the Solomon Islands, complemented with coffee beans from Brazil and croissants from the local Gramercy Baker (for a little later in the day, they also have a chocolate bar featuring doughnuts!).
Chocokoo
Estonian chocolate maker Chocokoo featured roasted rye crumbs in their award-winning 70% Costa Rican bar. These distinct cacao beans come from the Upala region, and the rye bread highlights Estonia’s local cuisine.
Now, you don’t have to choose between indulging in your two favourite gourmand pleasures — you can have both in one bite! And we’re sure to see more bread and chocolate concoctions headed our way, because this brilliant trend shows no sign of slowing down.