When I was a freshman in college, my parents decided to take a trip to Club Med in the Bahamas. Unfortunately, my school was on the odd trimester system so my vacation and my brother's high school vacation dates never lined up, and they chose to whisk him off to sunny 90° weather, leaving me behind in freezing Upstate, NY. Let's rewind. My parents are not warm weather vacation people. They prefer snow, mountains, hiking, that sort of thing, thus almost every single vacation I went on as a kid was to a cold climate. Utah, Colorado, Vermont...skiing. Ugh.

I felt incredibly deprived as a child. All my friends would hop planes to far off tropical places, returning to school with beads in their hair and killer tans. Not me, no way. I came back with chapped lips and an awkward goggle tan. Great. So, when I write that my parents decided to go to the Bahamas and that I couldn't attend, you can understand why I would feel upset. Anyway, what did they all come back swooning over? The resort's white chocolate bread. That's all they talked about for weeks after the trip. I was so annoyed and frustrated that I missed the trip, but more specifically the white chocolate bread, that I took it upon myself to scour the internet for the recipe, it must live somewhere!

Surprisingly, I really didn't find much. I came across one recipe that claimed it was the famed white chocolate bread recipe from Club Med in the Bahamas, but when I attempted it, the outcome was just a hot mess.

To this day I've never come across the recipe, however when I heard about heavy hitter Jim Lahey's chocolate bread recipe, I was excited to give it a shot. Jim uses regular chocolate chips and coconut in his recipe, but I plan to play around and sub in white chocolate, yum!

Interestingly, in his recently released baking bible My Bread, Jim talks about this recipe and its origins which in fact come from a bread he tried at a Jamaican restaurant in NYC. If you're not familiar with Jim Lahey, he's best known as proprietor of Sullivan Street Bakery (NYC), and the creator of the No Knead Bread recipe featured in the NY Times. It's an amazingly simple way to make bread without really doing anything at all.

Give it a shot. Oh, and if you have that white chocolate bread recipe, do share in the comments!

Chocolate-Coconut Bread

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons bread flour

2 cups loosely packed unsweetened large-flake coconut

1 cup semisweet chocolate chunks

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon instant or other active dry yeast

11/4 cups cool water

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, half of the coconut, the chocolate, salt, and yeast.

Add the water and, using a wooden spoon or your hands, mix until you have a wet, sticky dough, about 30 seconds.

Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature until the surface is puffy and the dough is more than doubled in size, 12 to 18 hours.

When the first rise is complete, generously dust a work surface with bran or flour.

Use a bowl scraper or rubber spatula to scrape the dough out of the bowl in one piece.

Using lightly floured hands or a bowl scraper or spatula, lift the edges of the dough in toward the center.

Nudge and tuck in the edges of the dough to make it round. Place a tea towel on your work surface, generously dust it with wheat bran or flour, and sprinkle it with 1/2 cup of the remaining coconut.

Gently place the dough on the towel, seam side down. Lightly sprinkle the surface with the remaining 1/2 cup coconut.

Fold the ends of the tea towel loosely over the dough to cover it and place it in a warm, draft-free spot to rise for 1 to 2 hours.

The dough is ready when it is almost doubled.

If you gently poke it with your finger, it should hold the impression. If it springs back, let it rise for another 15 minutes.

Half an hour before the end of the second rise, preheat the oven to 475 degrees F, with a rack in the lower third, and place a covered 41/2 - to 51/2 -quart heavy pot in the center of the rack.

Using pot holders, carefully remove the preheated pot from the oven and uncover it. Unfold the tea towel and quickly but gently invert the dough into the pot, seam side up. (Use caution—the pot will be very hot; see photos, page 55.)

Cover the pot and bake for 40 minutes.

Remove the lid and continue baking until the bread is a deep chestnut color but not burnt, 20 to 25 minutes more.

Use a heatproof spatula or pot holders to carefully lift the bread out of the pot and place it on a rack to cool thoroughly. [Bread Photo: Squire Fox]