Sourdough rye bread and molcajete
I posted about my first attempt to make sourdough rye bread following the recipe in Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Every Day. I thought the rye flavor was somewhat weak. Someone advised grinding up some dry rye bread and adding the crumbs to my next batch of rye dough. (In addition to everyone's advice to buy and use some caraway seeds and to increase the rye/wheat ratio.)
I saved the end of one rye loaf, let it dry, and then tried to figure out how to grind it. My spice grinder didn't work. I did not think my old blender could handle the dry, hard bread. I don't have a food processor. So ... I ended up grinding the bread in the granite mortar (molcajete) I recently purchased from Costco. Worked fine.
This may have been the first time in history that someone used a molcajete to make rye bread. Or perhaps not :)