Category Archives: Graham Crackers

Another gray day in Louisville. Oh well, the pictures aren’t sunny but the procedures still work. Begin by combining your dry ingredients in the bowl of your mixer, the paddle affixed:

Mix for a few second to combine your ingredients, then add your butter pieces.

You want pieces of butter remaining about like so:

Now add your wet ingredients (I combine them all together in a bowl since it’s easier to pour them that way):

And mix for about a minute until the dough comes together.

Here I deviate from the recipe and neither wait for the dough to chill, nor sandwich it between sheets of wax paper for rolling. I simply roll it out on parchment and dust the top with a little whole wheat flour to prevent sticking. Once it’s rolled out to about the size of a cookie sheet, I’m done.

Then all there is to do is trim the dough up into a rough rectangle and cut.

Lastly you want to “dock” the crackers with a fork, since you don’t want any bubbles forming in there…

This is the point where I do chill the crackers, since it’s much easier transferring them off the parchment when they’re firm. Why transfer them at all? Why not bake them in one large sheet? Primarily because you want a little browning around the edges, both for flavor and for texture. Spread them out on one or two sheet pans like so:

Bake in a 350 oven for ten minutes, rotate them, and give them 5-10 minutes more. Done!

You mean you’re going to make your own graham crackers? Yes, my friends, I am. You thought I was kidding about my s’mores-making skills? I wasn’t. Real-deal s’mores aren’t made with those poncy, crumbly things you buy in a store. Rather they’re held together by good, honest crackers, made at home and with some chew. And anyway, graham crackers aren’t hard to make. The trouble most people have is finding the flour. Graham flour, you see, is it’s own special thing, invented by — who else — Reverend Sylvester Graham, about whom we’ll learn much more later. His flour was what you might call a sort of whole grain pastry flour, low in gluten high in bran and germ. It’s nice stuff, but impossible to find unless you get it off the web. The following recipe — which is courtesy of Gale Gand — substitutes whole wheat and rye flours, which are a lot easier to come by.

Graham Crackers

2.5 ounces (1/2 cup) all-purpose flour
6.25 ounces (1 1/4 cups) whole-wheat flour
2.5 ounces (1/2 cup) light rye flour
3.5 ounces (1/2 cup) sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter, cut into pea-size bits
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoon molasses
1/4 cup cold water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. In a food processor or the bowl of an electric mixer, mix together the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add the cold butter and mix or process until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the honey, molasses, water, and vanilla. Mix until the dough comes together in a ball.

Between 2 sheets of waxed paper or plastic wrap, roll the dough 1/2-inch thick. Chill for 1 hour, until firm. Set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Lightly flour the dough and roll 1/8-inch thick. With a sharp knife or cookie cutter, cut into 2-inch squares. Arrange the crackers on nonstick or parchment lined cookie sheets. With a fork, prick several holes in each cracker. Bake for 10 minutes, rotate, and bake about 7 more minutes, until lightly browned at the edges. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan.