As I work at transforming my life into one that offers the beautiful simplicity that is true elegance, I am trying to simplify our diet. I am working hard to simplify the ingredients in the food we eat to the basics and to eat farm fresh food as often as possible. With a little more time in my life I have decided this is the time to experiment a little.

Today I decided to try making homemade french bread. I loved the simplicity of this recipe! I got the recipe from iHeart Naptime ( https://www.iheartnaptime.net/homemade-french-bread/ ). I loved the fact that it’s ingredients were basic: water, yeast, sugar, flour and salt. So off I went giving it a try. The great thing is my Kitchen Aid did most of the work since the dough hook will do your kneading for you! It was basically a matter of putting in the ingredients, mixing and then waiting 15 minutes for the dough to rest.

After it rested I rolled it out and formed loaves. Then it was time to let the dough rise. I let it rise for an hour so it would be ready and still warm for dinner. It was then time to bake off the loaves for dinner! Bonus… your house will smell amazing while the bread is baking!

The bread was so amazing and also so easy to make! I will bake it again for sure. My husband was more than a little surprised to come home from work to homemade bread.

In addition to bread this week, we were given cherries from a friend and this got me on the mission of using them in several ways. The first way was jam in the crock pot ( https://bakeatmidnite.com/slow-cooker-cherry-jam/#_a5y_p=4063031 ). It wasn’t fast, but it sure was easy! The jam also came out the perfect thickness. It may be my favorite jam to date. A cherry tart was also made ( https://www.errenskitchen.com/cherry-vanilla-shortbread-tart/ ). It had a shortbread crust and it was so good. So good that I am actually making a second tart for the 4th of July get together that we are going to!

I hope you try to make some foods from scratch using fresh and easy ingredients. Please leave comments with your creations!

Cheers!