On Monday evening, I made the dough for “Crispy Rye and Seed Crackers,” a recipe in Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day, (pp. 133-136). It’s a variation on the recipe in his Whole Grain Breads. I was not sure what kind of rye flour to use and decided to use medium rye. Instead of grinding flax seeds (I do not keep those in my pantry), I substituted flax meal by weight. I used canola oil and honey. The dough seemed a bit sticky, so I mixed in an additional tablespoon of white rye. (I had put the medium rye back in the apt. refrigerator and did not want to go get it again.) I did the brief kneading using white rye flour sprinkled on the mat. I’ve divided the dough into four pieces and refrigerated it, as he says it improves after a day or two in the refrigerator and can be held there for up to a week or frozen to use later. If the recipe works for us, I will have an additional cracker recipe. Due to the ground seeds, however, they only keep about eight days at room temperature. I suspect that would not be a problem at Aaron's house.

Eight minutes, Aaron? 🙂

We picked fourteen pounds of blueberries yesterday—not bad, but we will need to go back and pick more so that we can last out the year for baking with them, and for my husband eating them on his oatmeal. Today I experimented some more with my mother-in-law’s blueberry cobbler recipe. I looked at that cherry cobbler recipe that I made a few weeks ago (canned cherries) and noted the cake part is almost identical, except MIL’s does not use an egg. I decided to leave out the egg and follow my usual changes of reducing the salt, substituting buttermilk, and adjusting baking powder and baking soda. I also used 1/3 barley flour. I cut the vanilla to ½ tsp. The topping has never satisfied me; the original recipe took 4 Tbs. of butter, which is not typical for cobblers. I looked at the cherry cobbler recipe and decided to go with 1/3 cup sugar, ½ Tbs. cornstarch and 2 Tbs. water (neither in the original recipe), and 1 Tbs. butter and the usual 1 cup of blueberries. I cooked it on the stove top until thick. I then added ½ cup more of blueberries after removing from the heat. I baked it at 375F, as it was in a 9-inch round glass dish, on the third rack up in the oven for 28 minutes. The topping was a little too thick, so next time I’ll either reduce or eliminate the cornstarch.

I also must give thanks to my husband because as I was putting the lid on the vanilla, I knocked the measuring cup with buttermilk and vanilla off the counter. It went all over the floor, and me. The heavy measuring cup did not break on our ash floor. (It would have been a goner on the previous tile one.) While I ran upstairs to change clothes (should have been wearing an apron), my husband cleaned up the mess, so that I could return, replace the ingredients, and get the cobbler into the oven.