Toddler Eats: Stone Ground Whole Wheat Crackers

In a bowl, combine the flour, seeds, salt, 1/2 cup +2 tablespoons water, agave, and olive oil.

Mix until the ingredients form a ball.  You may need to add more water if it is too dry; do so one tablespoon at a time.  The dough should be firm.  If it seems too wet, add a little more flour.

Put your dough on a lightly floured surface and knead until it has a satiny finish, about 3 minutes.

{At this point, you can continue on or refrigerate the dough overnight in a bowl covered with plastic wrap.  The enzyme activity will produce more intense flavor from the dough.  If you skip this and just keep going, they are still tasty!}

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.  Mist or lightly spread a little oil on your work area.  This makes it easier to lift the dough from the surface.  Set your dough on your surface and, starting from the center, roll it into a rectangle.  You want to get it as thin as you can, so as my first grade teacher used to tell me when she was enforcing child labor in her classroom:  use some elbow grease!

Rolling Tips:

• If possible, use  a French rolling pin as it helps get a more even dough
• If you can’t get good leverage because your counter is too high and you are too short, use a chair.  You need leverage.
• Start in the center of the dough, roll up.  Go back to the center, roll down.  Turn dough 180 degrees, repeat.  When the dough is too spread out to turn it, simply turn your rolling pin and roll sideways.
• Ask someone bigger and stronger to help.

Put a little almond milk in a bowl (you can use any milk you want or even an egg wash if you prefer) and brush the top of the dough.  Cut the dough with a pizza cutter, pastry scraper, or knife into whatever shape you prefer.  I have used alphabet cookie cutters (uneven shapes–didn’t work that well), circle biscuit cutters, and done straight rectangle ones (like the picture above).  I find the rectangle to be the best because it is easy to get them approximately the same shape (which is important for even cooking) and gives the least amount of dough cut off for extra rolling (less work).

Here is my dough cut after the first roll out.  I didn’t do a great job of rolling it into a nice rectangle, so I had more cut off than I should have.

Place the crackers on the sheet pans so they are not touching one another.

These could be even thinner! Tim wasn’t home to help me muscle them really thin.

At this point you can decide what kind of crackers you want:  sweet or savory.  If you want sweet, brush them with some maple syrup.  If you want savory, top them with salt.  I did both.

Bake the crackers for 10 minutes and then turn the pans 180 degrees.  Bake another 10 minutes or until the crackers begin to turn a rich brown on both the top and undersides.

Let them cool before serving, which allows them to crisp up.