<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>
I give up! In less than 24 hours I've gotten more than 25 requests for
these tips, so, with apologies to those of you who got this file already,
I'm going to send it to the List for everyone's use, and for Posterity.
GF Cracker tips:
In general I've found our GF flour mix (2 parts white rice flour; 2/3 part
potato starch flour; 1/3 part tapioca flour) to be excellent for making
crackers of all varieties. Our flour is less sticky to deal with than is
wheat flour. The cookbook from which these recipes are drawn and adapted
talks about =not= kneading wheat doughs to avoid developing the gluten. For
once, we have the advantage!
Here are some general tips for making crackers:
Start with all ingredients at room temperature. This is especially
important for solid fats.
When mixing up the ingredients for crackers, start by mixing the flours
together, dry, in the mixing bowl. Add the remaining dry ingredients, and
mix well, then fats as called for, eggs, then liquids. After each addition,
mix well to get the ingredients evenly distributed. You don't need to
overbeat the final product -- just mix it up enough to get the dough to
come up into an easily handled ball -- but neither do you want it a "rough
mix" as for muffins or brownies.
At the end of the process of mixing up the dough, you need to add enough
liquid to make the dough a little softer than pasta dough. You can tell if
you've gotten it right when you go to roll out the dough. If it cracks as
you roll it out, it is not moist enough. Put it back in the bowl and add a
little more liquid (a few drops will often do the trick). If, on the other
hand, it's very sticky, put it back in the bowl and add a little more
flour.
To roll out the dough, begin by breaking off just enough to roll out into a
flat that will almost but not quite fill your work space (you'll get a feel
for this as you go along). Pat it in unfloured hands as if making a
playdough ball. (If it sticks to you, put it back in the bowl and add more
flour till it dries out a bit.) Leave no cracks. Begin to flatten this out
a little.
Now, make a circle of flour a little larger than the dough you've got in
your hands and put the dough there. Rub a little flour onto your rolling
pin, barely dust the top of the dough with flour, and roll lightly up and
down and side to side, working from the middle outward. (Is it cracking? If
so see above.) When it has almost doubled in size, spread a little more
flour on the surface and flip it over -- using a spatula to flip helps --
and if you can manage to respread the flour the flipped dough will land on,
before it lands! that will help too. Lightly flour the new top surface, and
roll it some more, side to side and up and down, until you have the
thickness called for in the recipe.
Thickness is critical to crackers, especially making them all the same
thickness. If you don't succeed in this, you'll need to watch them closely
as they cook and remove those that are crisping up or browning before the
rest. If you find that your crackers are thicker in the middle of the
rolled dough, remove the thinner outside crackers to the cookie sheet, and
reroll over the middle bits.
At this point, if you want to add any kind of a topping (decorative, brown
or granulated sugar; salt; seeds) sprinkle them evenly over the surface and
lightly roll it in with your rolling pin.
Next, choose what shape you want your cracker to be. You can go for a shape
that's economical of your time -- in which you simply slice it in strips
one way and then back again the other way (with a knife or a pizza wheel or
fancy it up with a zigzagging pastry cutter). Or, you can use the cookie
cutter method. If you're cooking for others, you might want to develop a
distinctive shape for each kind of cracker you make. For kids, consider fun
cookie cutters like animal shapes or stars or shoes or cars or ice cream
cones.
Prick your crackers. You can prick them in letter patterns for your kids,
for fun, or even make your own pricking device (straight pins with their
heads embedded in styrofoam work well) to speed up the process.
If you're going to add a glaze, do it now. Milk, egg (yolks, white, or
mixed whole), brown sugar in water; all make good glazes.
If you use the cookie cutter method, you should save up your dough scraps
and, after you've cut all the crackers you can from all the original dough,
return the scraps to your mixer bowl. Run the mixer until the scraps are
broken up evenly and the flour used to keep the rolled dough from sticking
is incorporated. Now add a few =drops= of whatever liquid was called for in
the recipe -- to rebalance and soften the dough. Roll again!
When making crackers of fair size, a spatula will come in handy for moving
the crackers to the cookie sheet. Keep in mind that crackers -- unlike
cookies -- do not spread when cooking, so you can pack them pretty tightly
on the cookie sheet. Leave about 1/4" between each.
Having two cookie sheets -- one cooking in the oven while you're preparing
the next one -- is the best idea. Only one sheet at a time should be in the
oven, to allow air to circulate around the crackers as they cook. If you
have only one sheet -- or want to have a few minutes to rest your feet in
here somewhere -- you can usually stack uncooked crackers that need to wait
for a free cookie sheet, as long as they are not sticky and are fairly well
dusted with flour. This lets you get all the dough cut to shape while the
first batch is cooking, then you can rest!
Check your crackers frequently as they cook. Remove those that crisp
through or brown before the others.
If the recipe calls for the crackers to be turned in the middle, you can
use a spatula to get them all flipped over and then -- for the pan will
have cooled by then -- spread them back out and flip the recalcitrant
crackers by hand* before returning them to the oven (timing is not critical
in returning crackers to the oven).
Remove the crackers to a wire rack to cool -- having them cool in a single
layer will aid in crispness -- and after they've cooled, if they have a
layer of flour still on them, use a pastry brush (or a small, natural
bristled paint brush) to dust them off.
After they have completely cooled, store them in an airtight container. If
you live in a place with high humidity, you may want to buy a small sack of
silica gel from a specialty kitchen store to help keep your cracker jar
dry. (Read the instructions for use of these gel sacks.)
By the way, most cracker doughs will stand refrigeration, in case you want
to do only half a batch, or get interrupted in the middle of cooking.
* Disclaimer: (with apologies to all those on the List who use
disclaimers!) These tips are not intended as professional advice. The
writer does not warrant the safety of the ideas or quality of the end
products or its suitability for any purpose whatsoever. Use these tips at
your own risk!
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