The New Hotness

The cracker recipe I’m using produces eight sets of crackers, so this time I added a variety of toppings to see what would work out best:

• Plain
• Salt
• Sugar
• Cinnamon
• Garlic
• Chopped chocolate
• Chopped cashews
• Chopped walnuts

Garlic wins over everything else, hands-down, no contest, but the mixture of all the toppings in the bottom of the cooling bowl was wonderful.

The crackers went into a large pot with a bag of desiccant:

It pulled out 30 grams of water while reducing the humidity to 20% overnight; the crackers started out crisp and became really snappy. Definitely the right way to get the job done.

These vaguely resemble the Processor Crackers recipe in Flatbreads & Flavors (Alford & Duguid):

• 3 C hard whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 C warm water, more as needed
• Toppings
• Water sprayer

I’m using coarse-ground red wheat that doesn’t soak up the water like fine-ground flour. The original recipe called for 1-½ C water, which produced a sticky ball.

• Blend wheat & salt in food processor
• Add water in a slow stream until dough firms up
• Blend another minute
• Knead half a minute on cutting board
• Cover
• Let rest 30 minutes while you prepare toppings

Finely chopped toppings work best; the nuts were too coarse.

• Preheat oven to 500 °F
• Divide dough in eight pieces, cover

For each piece of dough:

• Roll to about 2 mm
• Put dough on vented pizza pan
• Cut cracker shapes with pizza cutter
• Sprinkle topping
• Spritz with water
• Put in oven on top rack
• Punch timer for 3 minutes
• Prepare next piece
• Swap pans
• Iterate

Toss the crackers into a big bowl to cool, sampling as needed.

When crackers cool:

• Dump into large pot
• Add desiccant bag & humidity card
• Cover
• Snarf combined toppings from bowl
• Leave crackers to dry overnight

Wonderful!

Memo to Self: Shredded Parmesan cheese would be pretty good…