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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Sourdough Crackers


Since I've been experimenting with sourdough recently, I've had my eyes open for sourdough recipes. I didn't expect to find a sourdough cracker but this has become my favorite homemade cracker so far!

I found this novel recipe over at Kitchen Stewardship. It is a great way to use up any sourdough starter that you want to discard. The flavor of these crackers is wonderful. They remind me of goldfish, even though they contain no cheese! I'm glad these things are good for you because I can't keep from eating them!

The dough is soft and tender and I found it a little hard to roll out. When I baked the crackers, I found I was trying to roll them too thin. The thicker pieces puffed up into little pillows for an irresistible crunch! So don't sweat it if you don't think you have them rolled thin enough.

Sourdough Crackers

1 cup “discarded” sourdough starter
1/4 cup softened butter
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp sea salt

In a large bowl, combine the sourdough and butter and mix thoroughly. Mix the salt in with 1/4 cup flour and add to the sourdough mixture. Knead it all together in the bowl, adding as much flour as necessary to make a stiff dough. Cover the dough with plastic wrap or put a lid on the bowl to prevent it from drying out. Leave the dough at room temperature overnight.
Seven or more hours later, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Divide the dough in four portions. Roll it out on a nonstick baking mat or parchment paper using a rolling pin, until it is very thin.
Garnish if desired. (I like a little garlic powder.)

Transfer to your baking sheet. Cut the dough vertically and horizontally into quadrangles with a pizza cutter. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until just golden brown.

Mmmm. Good!

6 comments:

  1. Gina,

    I got the dry packet of sourdough starter from old sourdough. Getting ready to start it ... but there's no good directions besides adding the flour and water. Do you keep this one in the fridge or out room temp? I've tried a couple starters over the years that I didn't do too great with, and want to start off right with this one!
    Thanks for your blog, I try and keep up with it! You are impressive and inspiring to this fellow mother.
    Elisa

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  2. Elisa -
    Check on Old Sourdough's website. You should find a downloadable pdf with complete directions and recipe. You'll want to keep it at room temperature for at least a couple days and feed it at least twice a day to get it going. After that, you may start using it and place it in the fridge if you don't want to use it. Feed at least once a week if in the fridge. Every time I feed it, I let it out for at least 8 hours. I've been baking bread often enough that it doesn't stay in the fridge long!

    I'll do a post soon with details - but I'm new at this too! Did this make sense?
    Gina

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  3. what a lovely site you have. I didn't realize that crackers were that easy to make.

    Gill in Canada

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  4. Thank you so much! I finally found the download of Old Sourdough's site - couldn't find it the first time. So, I'll get it started today. Once I get this going, I'm going to try and work on some crackers as well! How on earth do you do so much? I have two little ones, and find that my baking (although I have the desire), is hard to fit in ... Elisa

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  5. These are some good crackers. We just tried this recipe recently and they were quite yummy and I thought they tasted like Goldfish or Cheese-its or something too, even without the cheese.

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  6. Words fail me. These are amazing! They really do taste like Goldfish crackers.

    I've made them twice this week - once with half white/half wheat flour, the second time with all whole wheat. The second batch, I seperated off half the dough and added garlic, onion, caraway, sesame and poppy seeds.

    I ended up letting the dough sit overnight plus all day both times, and they were actually easier to roll out than pie dough. I wonder if the extra 8 or so hours made the difference?

    Thanks for posting this - it's a new household favorite!

    -dep31-
    www.domesticendeavors.net

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