I'm ready to start a home-baked cracker revolution to match the bread revolution of the past 15 years. I've spent nearly two decades trying to persuade folks to bake their own bread and, most recently, asked the nearly impossible: Make 100 percent whole-grain breads at home. It's been a noble, uphill battle.
But I've encountered far less resistance in urging people to make their own whole-grain crackers - toasty, nutty, crisp, crackly crackers.
Why the receptivity? It's probably because crackers are far easier and faster to make than breads. But I also think a deeper reason is that they are so versatile, so easily substituted for chips and other snacks. Whole-grain crackers, at least the ones I've been teaching adults and kids to make, are the perfect, guilt-free treat.
They get their satisfying, toasty, nutlike flavor from the deep roasting of the grains' proteins and oils during the baking process. Crackers, properly made, have a long, loyal finish, with lingering, earthy flavors.
What I call four-seed snapper crackers are my all-time favorite cracker, made with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds and whole-wheat flour. The pumpkin, sunflower and flax seeds are finely ground, but the sesame seeds are left whole. Just a touch of honey or agave syrup adds the slightest sweetness.
A thin wheat cracker is made with 100 percent whole-wheat flour - not to be confused with enriched wheat flour, which is a tricky way of saying white flour.
Both are excellent for entertaining because, in addition to being easy to make, they're impressive: homemade crackers to go with your cheese plate or other appetizers.
Crackers can be naturally leavened with yeast, like Armenian lavash, chemically leavened with baking powder or baking soda, like many commercial cracker products, or totally unleavened, like matzo or Triscuits. They are usually crisp and flaky but don't have to be. They can be buttery or lean and mean, like saltines and other variations of "water crackers." Whole-grain crackers, regardless of the leavening method, have another major factor going for them: fiber, lots and lots of fiber.
The fiber in flour comes from the bran, the thin pericarp membrane surrounding the bulky endosperm of all grain, whether wheat, rye, oats, barley or even nongrain seeds such as sunflower, sesame and pumpkin. The fiber adds more substance and chew to crackers but, more important, it fills us up, decreases food cravings and has many other documented health benefits. It's good stuff. Of course, in white flour there is no bran - that's why it's white - and that's why it doesn't do any of the good things that whole-grain flour does.
