Chocolate for Breakfast

Most Americans have some kind of appreciation for "French cooking", mostly due to Julia Child and her TV show.  My generation watched her show--and then watched Dan Ackroyd parody her on SNL in its early years.  My kids' generation either read or watched "Julie and Julia", and so everybody knows a bit about Julia Child.  Most folks think if you throw enough butter and a cream sauce at a recipe, you will get "French" cooking.  And it's true--the typical "farm breakfast" for working farm families (and that's the majority of folks in France--it's still primarily an agricultural country)  here involves eggs, cheese, butter, cream, ham or another meat (think sausage or a few things we don't typically eat in America), and bread--after all, where did "french toast" come from?  But for the non-physical laboring public, breakfast in France is usually either coffee or tea, maybe a glass of fruit juice, and a pastry--this can be a croissant, a brioche, a chouquette, or (in my opinion) their very best invention, the PAIN AU CHOCOLAT.  Yup, the French actually put two thin bars of dark chocolate into a pastry and bake it into the very bread itself.  This is an idea which borders on divine inspiration.  The two thin bars running lengthwise through the dough means that you get chocolate in every bite of the thing, AND it's their great dark chocolate, to boot.  Several medical studies have been published in the past few years indicating that, as Woody Allen predicted in "Sleeper" years ago, dark chocolate does have medical benefits for our health.  It supposedly lowers blood pressure.  It creates higher levels of HDL and lowers the production of LDL (the bad kind of cholesterol).  In moderation, it appears to be a good thing.  And here I am, in the south of France, where they make them fresh every day--it's too good to be true!