Matcha Charcoal Marbled Bread recipe is a beautiful bread recipe combining matcha and activated charcoal artistically to make it lovely and delicious.
Adding colour to breads is quite easy. I have been addicted to coloured breads lately and you would know about it if you are a regular visitor here. My beetroot toast bread I made last time was super hit and readers loved it to the core. I also love to use natural colours for my bread so this time, it is matcha and activated charcoal.

I have made activated charcoal buns before and loved them, but unfortunately they never made to the blog. So I decided to compile each and every step and make it into a post. So if you are interested in adding colour to breads, then this post would definitely help you.
When you add vegetable puree to bread dough, it forms the liquid part of the recipe, but when you are using powders, you don’t have to worry about the liquid part. Use water or milk or any plant based milk to make the dough and then you can add the powders.
If colouring the whole batch, you can even add the powder along with the flour before adding any liquid. But as this involves three colours, I had to make the dough, knead it partially and then add the colours. To make the mixing easier, add 1-2 tsp of water along with the powders.

Matcha Charcoal Marbled Bread – Ingredients Used
Flour – This is the most important ingredient when it comes to bread baking. You can use either maida/ all purpose flour or bread flour to make your breads. There is definitely some major differences when you bake with maida or bread flour. Bread flour breads are lighter in texture because of the high protein content. I use Vivaan bread flour for all my breads ( you can check it out by clicking on this link).
Matcha Powder – This is the green tea powder and is easily available from Amazon. Click on the link to check it out.
Activated Charcoal Powder – Make sure that it is food grade before you get it. I got it from Amazon. Click on this link to check it out.



Matcha Charcoal Marbled Bread – Kneading by hand/ machine
Whenever I post a bread recipe, the major question I get asked is about kneading. Either to use a stand mixer or by hand and is stand mixer necessary?
I have been baking bread as long as I have been blogging and I got a stand mixer only two years back. So I hand kneaded my bread dough for nearly 9 years and got amazing results. Stand mixers are there to make your life easier, but they are not a necessity. If you don’t have a mixer, there is nothing to worry about. It takes three to four extra minutes to knead the dough by hand. And feeling bread dough by hand while kneading is an amazing feeling. I definitely miss it now.
This bread tin I have shown below is one of my favourites. Though I haven’t done many breads with this, I plan to do in future. I also made my Beetroot Toast bread with this mould only. I don’t remember the vendor from whom I ordered this tin but it was years back and they were from Bangalore.
Always line your bread tin with parchment paper before baking the bread. It will be easier for you to remove it from the mould. It saves lots of heart ache.

Tin size to be used
The recipe I have shared makes 3 loaves of 12.5″ by 2.5″ by 2″. That is the dimension of this tin. If you want to make a single 5″ cube bread, then divide the recipe ingredients by 1.5 and if using 8″ by 4″ tin divide the recipe ingredients by 2.

To make it easier to understand the shaping, I made a short video as usual and posted it n my Instagram profile. If you are a visual learner, then hop on to my profile to watch the video.

Matcha Charcoal Marbled Bread
Ingredients
- 645 gm All Purpose Flour / Maida
- 2 tsp Salt
- 1 tbs Instant Yeast
- 375 ml Milk
- 3 tbs Oil
- ½ tbs Matcha Powder
- 1 tsp Activated Charcoal Powder
Instructions
- In a bowl mix together flour, salt and yeast.
- Add the milk and oil and mix it to form sticky dough.
- Transfer to counter and knead it for 5 minutes. If using stand mixer, knead for 3-4 minutes.
- If the dough is dry, add more water to bring it to correct consistency while kneading.
- Divide the dough into three portions.
- Keep one portion white, knead it for 4 minutes either by hand or by machine and place it in an oiled bowl and cover with cling film. Set aside.
- To one portion, add matcha powder and knead for 4 minutes, either by hand or by machine. Add 1-2 tsp of water to mix it easily into the dough.
- Place in an oiled bowl, cover with cling and set aside.
- Add charcoal powder to the third portion, add 1-2 tsp of water and knead for 4 minutes, either by hand or by machine.
- Place in an oiled bowl, cover with cling film and set aside.
- Once all the dough doubles in volume, it is time to shape them.
- Divide each portion into three equal portions if using the rusk pan, if not, no need to divide them.
- Shape them into tight rounds, roll them into a rectangle, fold the sides to the centre, flip and roll it lengthwise into a rectangle.
- Once all the rectangles are rolled, set them aside for rest for ten to fifteen minutes.
- Now roll each rectangle into a long rectangle, to the size of your bread tin.
- Take one white rectangle, one matcha and one charcoal and place then side by side.
- Apply water on each rectangle and place the other on top.
- Once all the three are stacked, apply water evenly on the surface and roll the dough from the longest side into a tight log. Make sure that the seam side in at the bottom.
- Place the logs in lined bread tins.
- Cover and set aside until 1.5 times its original volume.
- Preheat oven to 200C with both filaments and fan on.
- Bake the bread with or without lid for 20-25 minutes in the oven.
- Take them out, flip them onto wire rack, remove the parchment and let them cool completely.
- Wrap the breads in cling film and foil and let them rest overnight at room temperature.
- Next day, slice it up with a bread knife and serve.