We are almost out of bread--just enough for my husband's lunch today and tomorrow--but with heat and record humidity, I am trying to hold off baking bread until Monday evening, when it is supposed to cool down.

Those loaves look good, Chocomouse. Are those your iron bread pans?

On Monday morning, I baked Oat & Peach Muffins, a recipe from Muffin Magic [Ryland, Peters, and Small, 2010], pp. 24-25. It was one of those little cookbooks with pretty pictures that ended up in the discount section. I found it a few years ago, back when I still lived near a bookstore where I could browse. It had a few recipes I thought made it worth my while, and when we were packing up the guest quarters for the now ongoing renovation, I found it and set it aside to try some recipes. I had some leftover frozen peaches, as I had had to buy some ringers to supplement the fresh ones when I made jam a couple of weeks ago, so this recipe was a good fit. I made a few changes in that I reduced the brown sugar from ½ cup plus 2 Tbs. to 1/3 cup, the largest amount I usually use in a muffin. I replaced 1/3 of the AP flour with white whole wheat and added 1 Tbs. milk powder and 1 Tbs. flax meal. I sprinkled a little of the Penzey’s cinnamon sugar on top before baking (it has a bit of vanilla in addition to the cinnamon sugar). I baked them as six jumbo muffins rather than a dozen and reduced the temperature from 425 to 400F. (Lower temperature works better with USA pans.) I baked the full 25 minutes. I had a warm muffin for breakfast. These are good, although I would not necessarily buy peaches in order to bake them; I suspect , however, that they would be at their best with fresh peaches, so one day I will give that a try. That means I will type up my version of the recipe to keep, as one of the charms(?!) of these little gift cookbooks is their incredibly small typeface.

A month or so ago, I adapted Peter Reinhart’s Oat Bran Bread (from Brother Juniper’s Bread Book) by incorporating buttermilk, flax meal, replacing 4 cups of the bread flour with that much whole wheat, using a cup of high-gluten flour in place of 1 cup of bread flour, replacing brown sugar with honey, reducing the yeast, and reducing the salt. I also changed the mixing method. The recipe is now my own. My husband and I loved the taste, but the bread was not as soft as we would like, which led to lots of crumbs. I wanted to try fixing that, so this time I incorporated 4 Tbs. olive oil after adding all the flour and then kneading. The recipe had made two large 9x5-inch loaves. This time, I made it as three 8 ½ x 4 ½-inch loaves, a size we prefer for our sandwiches. I baked for 40 minutes at 350F. They look good but a tad smaller than I would like. The recipe could probably be scaled up slightly.

I baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Wednesday. I am trying to use a lighter hand with sprinkling salt on them.