Orange, chocolate, apricot, almond flat-breads

While it is not overly sweet, its combination of citrus, chocolate, dried fruits and nuts places this bread in the category of sweet breads. Since such breads are most commonly found in the form of loaves, for a change I decided to shape the dough into flat-breads. Just like their savoury counterparts, they are quicker to make, and equally flavoursome as loaves. The dough has a light chocolate flavour infused with orange and has bursts of a richer, intense  chocolate flavour from the chunks along with citrus-soaked apricots and crunchy bits of almond.

Makes: 8 flat-breads

Ingredients

2 cups wholewheat bread flour or chapatti flour/ atta (I like to use chapatti flour for making yeasted breads since it makes softer, lighter textured whole-grain breads)

1 teaspoon yeast

1 teaspoon grated orange zest

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons orange juice

2 tablespoons chopped apricots

2 tablespoons chopped, toasted almonds

4 tablespoons dark chocolate chopped into small chunks

A pinch of salt

¾ cup yoghurt

Method 
Toss the apricots in 1 teaspoon of the orange juice and set aside to soak. Mix the flour, cocoa powder, orange zest, yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Add the yoghurt and the remaining orange juice and mix to a dough. It should be soft, sticky but stiff enough to knead. Knead for 7-8 minutes on a well-floured surface, adding more flour if necessary. Cover and leave to rise for 1–1½ hours in a fairly warm place until doubled in size.

Knead the risen dough briefly to deflate it, then flatten to a large circle. Sprinkle with the almonds apricots and chocolate chunks. Stretch and fold the edges of the dough over these ingredients. Knead again on a well-floured surface until the ingredients are fully incorporated. Ensure than the ingredients do not form clusters in the dough but are evenly spaced out. 

Preheat the oven to 190ᵒC /375ᵒF. Place a greased baking tray in the oven to heat. Divide the dough into 8 roughly equal sized pieces (see note). Roll each piece out to a thickness of about ½ cm/1/4 inch on a floured surface. Allow to rise for about 15-20 minutes, until puffy. Carefully transfer on the hot baking tray up to 2 breads at a time and bake them for 10-12 minutes until firm and golden. Serve hot.

NOTE:

The dough will make eight small flat breads. Since the breads are best eaten hot and freshly baked, if you are not serving all of the at once, just make as many as you want and refrigerate the remaining dough for up to 2 days.