Cooking officially turns into a project when it results in three trips to the store for ingredients, an hour searching for necessary equipment, and having the stove on all day.  Dave did not realize what he had done by pulling a corned beef brisket out of the freezer on Saturday!  I had bought it in March  for a traditional St. Patrick’s dinner.  He was not up to that kind of food, back then, so in the freezer it went.  A traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner just did not sound good at the end of June.

What did sound good?  Corned beef from Katz’s and Swirl Rye from Zabar’s!  Since flying to NYC was not an option, I went in search of the swirl rye that shows up occasionally  at one of our local supermarkets.  No luck!  With the corned beef simmering away in the crockpot, and the swirl rye determination of Jerry, I had no choice but to make the bread myself.  I had everything on had except rye flour.  For some reason Safeway had four different offerings of almond and coconut flour in three different sections of the store, and no rye flour anywhere.  As a matter of fact – there were very few whole grain offerings, but that is another story.  As an industry professional, I could fully explain the “reasoning” and/or “logic” behind what does and does not get stocked in the store, but you would all fall asleep in two minutes.  So, off to Whole Foods I went.  I easily found the necessary rye flour and some beautiful organic blackberries that I decided, on the spot, would go into a cobbler along with the “less than beautiful” apricots hidden in the back of our fridge.  See – this is how it goes.  All I wanted was a decent corned beef on rye, on a Sunday afternoon!  Now I’m baking bread and making cobbler.

I consider myself a fairly accomplished bread baker, although I do not recall ever making a swirl rye.  I used the recipe I found on line from Red Star Yeast.  My biggest surprise was that darker dough is the same as the lighter dough, with the addition of some cocoa powder!  The recipe can be found here.

Roll out the dark dough. Fold over and set aside

Roll out the light dough.

Place the dark dough on the light dough. Trim the sides and edges as needed.

Roll into a loaf.  Place on a parchment lined baking sheet that has been oiled.

I made some mini bread sticks with the trimmings.  The back deck is a great “proofer” in the summer.  I got a great rise on the loaf.

Bake according to directions.

To assemble the sandwich, I sliced the bread a little thick.  I spread both sides with mustard.  I warmed the sliced corned beef in a small pan with Swiss cheese on top, until it got soft and gooey.  I placed the meat and cheese on the bread.   I served store bought coleslaw alongside.

I mentioned cobbler, didn’t I!  Well, sharing this is going to result in coming clean with one of my short cuts.  I use a cobbler mix.  It’s fantastic.  You can even make this with canned fruit and people will think you spent hours baking.  There are a few mixes out there.  I used one in a small bag that looks a lot like the fish fry product they also produce.  Use any fruit you like.  I used chopped apricots and blackberries.  Bake according to the directions on the package. By the time I was ready to snap a shot of the finished product, half the pan of cobbler and a pint of ice cream had gone missing.  Dave assures you, it was good!

Thanks for stopping by.

Have a great evening,

Laura