I read in the ‘The Backwoodsman’ magazine that folks in the old days made bannocks.  That’s a quick bread that you make over a campstove and either bake or fry in a cast iron skillet.  Every article says it’s the best bread they’ve ever had!  So, I thought I should learn to make it in case the world comes to an end and I need to eat scraps from my pantry.

That stuff tastes like hard no-flavor biscuits.  I tried it a couple of times and it never got any better.  I actually felt guilty feeding it to Mike for dinner.  So, my next plan was to find a bread recipe that was quick and easy and you could actually eat it with a smile on your face.  I kept thinking about the cherry/chocolate boule bread I  bought at Hubble & Hudson in The Woodlands.  The kind of bread you wanted to lick before you ate it.

My solution?  You Tube.   I have learned so many things on You Tube – but that’s another story!  I looked up boule bread recipes and found a great one called “Artisan Bread Master Boule Recipe – Part 1 & 2”.  There are only 4 ingredients:  water, yeast, salt and flour.  I like simple.

 (pretend you're seeing one of the really cool pictures I was trying to upload - but blogger.com changed something and I can't include ANY pictures)

I mixed the ingredients according to the directions but with the last cup of flour, I added a cup of chopped dried dark cherries and a cup of mini milk chocolate chips.  Yummm.  You’re supposed to let the dough sit in the refrigerator over-night before you bake the bread – not gonna happen.  Mike and I pulled out a fourth of the dough and let it rise for an hour then we baked it.  He wanted to eat it the second it came out of the oven, but I convinced him to wait 20 minutes so it could breathe.  Ha!  I was really praying that it would taste really really good and not like that nasty bannock dried up no flavor biscuit thing.

Not able to put him off any longer, we sliced it up (of course we put lots of butter on it) and took a bite.  Awesome!!  My only change would be to add more cherries and chocolate.  I wonder if you could stuff it till it looked like fruit cake?  Too much?  Mike wants walnuts in it next time.  Maybe next, next time.  Next time, I’m going to try apricot and white chocolate.

But first, we have to eat the other 3 loaves waiting to be baked.  That recipe makes a lot of bread!  Eating half a loaf of bread a day is a bad idea.   I better go buy some bigger pants this afternoon because this is not going to be pretty.