Savory Chocolate Bread

Food just goes well with my family. Not only do we all love to cook -- and eat -- but we also are all driven to share our food finds with each other. Nothing makes a meal taste as good as sharing it with someone you love. My sister has especially good taste in artisan foods, and likes to treat us to delicacies they make in small shops in her city. So, when sis brings fancy food down to us, we gobble it right up. One food gift was a beautiful loaf of savory chocolate cherry bread. Unsurprisingly, it didn't last. While I temporarily forgot about it in the bustle of living and working, eventually, an obsessive hunt across the internet for exciting bread recipes yielded a recipe for savory chocolate bread. The game was on.

As you can see in the above photo, the bread raised wonderfully. The recipe quickly and easily came together; I still can't remember why I ever thought that bread recipes were truly "hard". Now, don't overgeneralize that statement. I still am not an expert--and probably never will be, thanks to having alarmingly little patience--in getting the perfect texture or the right rise, and I will adamantly defend the difficulty of making a loaf worthy of being sold in a bakery. However, it really isn't that hard to get something tasty and bread-like out of the oven with fairly little fuss.

While the bread had a nice, rich, savory flavor -- perfect for eggs (surprise!) or sandwiches -- it was a little on the dry side. It also tended to crumble whenever I sought to cut it, but the firmness of the loaf allowed for fairly thin slices, which I personally prefer. So, six of one, half dozen of the other. On the whole, the bread was solid, but not as mind-blowingly rich and moist as the bread my sister brought us, and not as irresistible as the Guinness loaves. And so, the hunt continues.

Taste: 7
Ease:8
Comfort: 5.5