These soft and fluffy Chocolate Nutella rolls use the Chinese milk bread method. The rolls are impossibly soft with an intense chocolate and hazelnut flavor!
Ever since making the Chinese milk bread, I’ve been intrigued with the tangzhong method. I found this recipe from a tried-and-true Asian baking blog called The Woks of Life. While this recipe doesn’t use tangzhong, it is a milk bread recipe that yields soft and fluffy rolls.
What caught my eye was that this was a chocolate and Nutella bread. And it was Asian. WHAT. Nutella isn’t a popular ingredient in Chinese baking, so this immediately caught my attention.
This dough was probably the easiest bread dough I’ve ever made. Essentially, you dump all the ingredients into your stand mixer and let it do all the work. The hard work comes later, when you have to roll out each piece of dough, slather it with Nutella, roll it up and shape it. I think that part took me a good 45 minutes to complete.
But oh, was it worth it! These rolls definitely had the texture of the Chinese pastries that I love so much. Except that these were CHOCOLATE. And filled with Nutella! I’m so glad that this recipe made 16 because these rolls will be gone in no time!
Go make these NOW!
Husband’s rating: 4 out of 5
Addie’s rating: 4 out of 5
My rating: 4.5 out of 5
Chocolate Nutella rolls
Ingredients
- ⅔ cup heavy cream room temperature
- 1 cup milk room temperature
- 1 large egg room temperature
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup cake flour
- 3 and ½ cups bread flour
- 1 Tablespoon active dry yeast
- 1 and ½ teaspoons salt
- ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- Nutella about 1 Tablespoon for each bun (16 Tablespoons total)
- 2 teaspoons sugar dissolved in 2 teaspoons hot water to make a simple syrup
Instructions
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, combine the following ingredients in this specific order: heavy cream, milk, egg, sugar, cake flour, bread flour, yeast, salt and cocoa powder. Mix on low for about 15 minutes. You may need to stop the mixer a few times to scrape down the side. You can mix by hand, but it will require another 5-10 minutes of kneading for everything to come together. Your final dough will be tacky but not sticky.
- Transfer the dough to a well-oiled bowl. Cover and allow to rest for at least an hour so the dough almost doubles in size. I used the bread proofing feature on my oven and sat the dough in there for about an hour.
- Lightly dust your working surface with some flour. Divide the dough into 16 equal pieces.
- Roll a piece of dough into a rough rectangle/oval. Spread about 1 Tablespoon of Nutella on top.
- Cut vertical slices about ½ inch wide into the dough, making sure NOT to cut all the way through the top (you want the dough to stay together).
- Starting in one of the corners, roll the dough up so the slices look diagonal and you have a cigar-looking shape of dough. Coil up the cigar shape and tuck the ends underneath and pinch to seal. Place the dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with the other dough and make sure you leave at least 2 inches of space between each bun.
- Place the baking sheets back into the oven to proof (or cover and allow to rise for another 1 hour or so until the rolls almost double in size).
- Preheat your oven to 350°F.
- Brush the top of the buns with an egg wash (1 egg mixed with 1 teaspoon of water). Bake your buns in the oven for 14-16 minutes. Once you take the buns out of the oven, brush them with the simple syrup.
- Allow buns to cool before serving.