Graham Crackers - Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads
Oh how I wanted these to be good. The ingredient list was simple. The process looked simple. I even found Graham Flour at a specialty baking shop. However, the fact that the book didn't include a picture of the finished product should have been my very first clue.
INGREDIENTS AND CALCULATION HERE
Mixing the dough was odd. The directions said that it should feel like modeling clay and be "silky", not be sticky, and not be crumbly. However when mixing this by hand it was sticky or crumbly. The roughness of the Graham Flour was partly to blame for this. After trying to add more flour...and trying to add more milk I eventually got what was kind of a wet mass. The book said that it develops more flavor overnight so I figured I'd let it sit overnight and come back in the morning.
In the morning I had a dense clay like dough once all the flour had properly hydrated. I was feeling confident. I rolled it out...baked it...it smelled good. I waited for it to cool on the tray.
Could it be? Do I have graham crackers?
Why yes! These appear to be whole grain Graham Crackers! But the celebration was not to last. Once cooled I snapped them apart. They smell good. However they are inedible. Ok, I exaggerate...they can be eaten...but they would need to be soaked in coffee or milk or something. They are so dense and hard I am afraid of cracking or chipping a tooth. I gnawed on a corner gently with my molars after fighting to break a piece off. The term hardtack is the only one that comes to mind.
Sensei's Report Card
Tasting Notes: The honey and molasses are there. The whole grain is prominent. The flavor profile seems right. Although I can't detect the cinnamon I added at all. Had this been a light and crispy instead of dense and crunchy cracker it could have been a winner.
Time/Effort: 2 days (kinda). The mixing on day one at night after dinner takes maybe 5 minutes and that's it for day one. The second day is just rolling out the dough and baking. Total time is probably an hour to an hour and a half total.
Would I make it again: No. Nor will I be returning to this version. There are many other recipes out there including this one I found posted by Mini Oven here on the forums that seem to be a lighter and more reasonable version of the Graham Cracker I remember from my youth.
https://www.joyofbaking.com/cookierecipes/HomemadeGrahamCrackersRecipe.html
So it looks like these are destined for the bin. I'm not sure I can think of a way to save them. Maybe blend them up (at risk to my blender or food processor blades) and use it somehow? Oh well, it’s all part of the adventure!
Comments
Ok, after grumbling to myself I decided to whip up a batch of the JoyOfBaking recipe. I ended up creaming the butter into the flour instead of just roughly combining it (next time I'm probably better off doing it by hand). Because of that the dough was very soft and sticky. After a bit of time in the freezer to firm up I was able to roll and then spread the dough out thin and bake it.
The result is fine given the heavy rain today and operator error. The flavor is good although not exactly what I was expecting. I would try brown sugar or adding a bit of molasses next time. Also maybe more honey and less sugar. All in all this is a minor recovery from this morning but not the end of the quest for a good graham cracker. If anyone else has a recipe that they really like I'd love to hear it.
DIRECTIONS AND CALCULATIONS HERE
Wow Steven you make everything! I’d never even considered making graham crackers before. I hope you find a recipe you like and share it with us.
Benny
Thank you for sharing your struggle! Very interesting to read. Recently I tried to make some Russian gingerbread cookies of sorts and ended up with a jar of inedible blobs of dough. I dried them in the oven until they become bone dry. They are practically impossible to be bitten by a human jaw!! Harder than sailor's hard tack 😀 I'm still going to try and make them right using another recipe
Steven: I don't know what wildlife is near you in Osaka. But I usually feed my failures to ducks, geese and squirrels.
On one of my bike routes, there is a canal that is home to year-round ducks and geese who are used to being fed stale bread. They even seem to be trained to approach when someone yells "Here ducky, ducky, ducky!" or "Here goosey, goosey, goosey!"
As long as it floats, I figure even the hard stuff will eventually soften enough for them to eat.