July 25 -- crackers!

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I got a cracker-making class for my birthday!  The people who bake for Zingerman's have a goal of encouraging everyone to bake, so they offer a whole bunch of different classes.

Crackers are a relatively new class.

I looooove crackers, and am interested in making crackers that are healthier than the ones in the box.  Less salt.  Less fat.  No trans fats.

This class was very interesting and very well organized.  We didn't have to do any measuring, or any prep work (or any clean-up!).  They brought us all of our ingredients, all measured, in separate containers.  We added each ingredient (and could taste them, first, if we wanted), but didn't have to measure.

The teacher had the same pre-measured ingredients to work from.  She made the crackers while we watched, and then her crackers were whisked off to the oven while we made our crackers.  This is brilliant -- we got to taste her crackers, so we knew exactly what they would taste like, if we'd made them exactly the way she did.........

Here are her roasted-garlic seedy crackers.  I should have used some caraway seed, but was too chicken.  I was glad I left off the extra salt.

These are very tasty crackers.

Here are mine, at home in natural light (so they don't look as yellow as the ones under incandescent light at the bakery).  Mmmmmmm.

These next crackers were the only ones that rested between mixing and rolling.  If you end up doing a lot of mixing, with a dough that has gluten, a rest will enable it to be ok with letting you roll it out.  I'd tried making crackers at home just once before class, and I had to fight my dough, tooth and nail, to get it to roll out.  It wanted to be a ball, not a flat sheet of dough.....

This dough had a 3-hour rest, and was ready to be rolled.  These are tasty, too.

Here is our foray into gluten-free.  These were made with rice flour, and cooked brown rice (ground together in a food processor).  This was a very tender dough.  Even though we rolled it between two layers of thin plastic, it still really wanted to crack.

Rolling them verrrrrry thin was key.  When extremely thin, the crackers have a very satisfying crunch.  When not thin enough, they are a bit leathery.

These are the piece de resistance -- cheese crackers with a bit of pepper on top.  One of their ingredients is grated cheddar.  It was a really good cheddar (remember I said we could taste our ingredients....).  WOW these are good.  They smell fantastic, and taste just as good as they smell.  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

These are not the kind of crackers I want myself to be eating more of, but as a treat?  Wow.  I have encouraged the Bake House to make them and sell them to the Deli.  I would absolutely buy them, from time to time.  Mmmmmmmmmm!!!!!



I'm so glad I got to take the class.  It was great to get the hands-on experience, mixing the dough (we did almost all of that by hand; just the rice crackers were mixed mechanically), rolling, cutting, embellishing with seeds or pepper.....  I had my first experience with a tapered rolling pin.  I don't know that I prefered it to the cylindrical kind, but maybe I just need more practice.

It was great to get to watch the teacher use exactly the same ingredients and tools that we used, and to hear her talk about the variations she might try.  Buttermilk instead of milk, different kinds of cheeses....

None of these crackers had any leavening at all.  I wonder what would happen if some were used.  I wonder what about using a yeast-raised dough.

Roasted garlic and all the seeds are yummy and healthy.  I mean to use those ingredients when I make crackers at home.  I also mean to try different flours (whole grains!).  Our bulk-food store has a lot of variety, and that way I can buy as little as I want, rather than having pounds and pounds of ingredients around.

What a fun class!  I am looking forward to making lots and lots of crackers!!!!!



Before we leave the Bake House -- there was a brownie class going on at the same time as my crackers class.

After class, the teachers shared samples with each other's classes, so the students could taste the results of the other class's recipes.

We stared with blondies.  I've never liked blondies.  The ones I'd had before the 25th tasted like someone made brownies, only they forgot the chocolate.  Well!  Zingerman's blondies start with pecans in praline.  !!!  (I didn't get to taste that before it went into the blondies, but I bet it is dynamite all by itself!)  They break up the pecans/praline, and use that as an ingredient in the blondies.  Which are absolutely delicious.  Wow.  I will definitely buy one of those from time to time.  I don't want to make them and have a whole pan of them in the house (especially as I'm the only one here who eats nuts!).  But to have as a treat once in a while?  Totally.

Then the brownie teacher brought us tastes of their Buenos Aires brownies, which have dulce de leche in them.  They, too, were very good.

We had one more kind, too, but I'm not sure what they were called.  They, too, were good, but I didn't like them as well as the other two.

The blondies really surprised me.  Yum.  They do sell blondies at the Deli.

Now if I can just convince the Bake House and the Deli to make those scrumptious peppery cheese crackers available at the Deli................

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