Chocolate Prune Bread Redux

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BREAD BAKING BUDDIES ROUNDUP

Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods;

and good bread with (chocolate*), greatest of feasts.

- James Beard (1903 – 1985) (*change is mine)

The only thing better than a good loaf of bread is sharing that loaf with friends. Now throw chocolate into the mix and just imagine how phenomenal! The greatest feast, indeed. Who hasn’t smeared a slice of white bread with Nutella or split open a hunk of baguette and tucked a few squares of chocolate deep into the soft, dense center? Who wouldn’t choose a pain au chocolat over a simple croissant? And isn’t chocolate bread pudding so much more… comforting than the regular stuff? Go on… admit it.

As soon as I received the new edition of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, I jumped at the chance to be Kitchen of the month for the Bread Baking Babes. I adore all of the Artisan Bread in 5 books, not to mention the blog, and wanted more than anything to share the love, to vaunt the greatness of their baking books and the perfect of their no-knead formula and recipes. For the Bread Baking Babes challenge, I needed one single recipe, something that was unusual enough to make it an intriguing challenge while delicious enough to make everyone want to bake it… and to draw non-Babes, fellow bloggers and bread bakers to want to join in and bake for their Buddy badge.

I combed through the index, flipped through the pages and made a list of several recipes I wanted to try. Too many. I had to choose just one. I decided on the Chocolate Prune Bread. As sweet, as chocolaty as one wanted, prunes could be replaced with dried cherries, blueberries or cranberries. As versatile as any great bread recipe. But I knew that it couldn’t but please everyone. Many were expecting something bordering on cake, but it was most definitely a bread: soft, light and fluffy, tender with barely a hint of sweet except for the bits of chocolate, as much or as little as one desired. The chopped prunes or dried cherries added a burst of flavor, fruity and tart.

Visit my original blog post in which I posted the challenge as well as the recipe and don’t miss out on visiting every single one of the Babe’s blogs to see how they can take one recipe and spin it a dozen different ways.