Last week I shared how I attempted to make bread from scratch. This is part of my attempt to learn to cook basic, everyday foods we often take for granted. It wasn’t too shabby, but could’ve been better for sure. Thanks to everyone who left me comments and sent emails. I will certainly re-attempt it soon with some of your wisdom!
I hinted that I wanted to try graham crackers next. I thought it would be a nice break before diving back into breadmaking. My kids LOVE graham crackers. It’s been one of those staple kid snacks in our house. But the store-bought versions are also laden with hydrogenated oils and perservatives. So why not attempt to make these, right?
For this recipe, I phoned up a celebrity chef for help. (OK, so I went to foodnetwork.com, but at least now I have your full attention, no?) If there are any Alton Brown fans in the house, you might appreciate today’s recipe.
Mr. Brown’s recipe calls for graham flour, which was a particular gem to hunt down. It wasn’t at Fred Meyer, Trader Joe’s, Marlene’s, or Top Foods (don’t worry, I called ahead of time). I did find out that it’s at Metropolitan Market and QFC. I believe it’s also at Summit and Tukwila Trading. It was on the baking aisle and sold for $2.99 for a bag big enough to make roughly 3 batches of the graham crackers.
The other thing about his recipe – the amounts are exact. VERY exact. For instance, I needed 8 3/8 oz of the graham flour and 2 1/4 oz of molasses. Good golly! You want to know my quick & dirty tip for how I did this? I found an old baby’s bottle (clean, of course). Once everything is mixed, you have to refrigerate your dough. My son was getting very impatient at this point and insisted on licking the bowl. I don’t know that this is true “bowl lickin’ batter” at its best, but he enjoyed it.
Then you roll the dough between parchment paper. Note to self: DO READ THE ENTIRE recipe before starting it! Of course I didn’t have any parchment paper, nor was I about to get any. I’d already made a trip for the graham flour and pestered the neighbor when I realized I was out of molasses (thanks, Julie!). I made due with wax paper though, and it seemed to work fine.
You bake the crackers for 25 minutes or until the edges are slightly golden brown. Mine got a little too brown – whoops! – but I know you’ll do a better job than me on that.
So my final product doesn’t exactly look like store bought (or Alton Brown’s version), but that’s OK because they were pretty darn good. And that’s what matters most, right?
This might sound sort of corny, but when I handed my kids these crackers – not the ones bought from the store – but the ones lovingly made for them with wholesome flour, organic whole milk, and cinnamon - I couldn’t help but feel VERY good about what I was doing. And when my daughter asked for another one, it made all the effort worth it.
My next plan of attack? Homemade strawberry jam. Any other ideas for what you’d like to see me struggle attempt to make completely from scratch?
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Strawberry freezer jam is wonderful and easy!
I would love to see you attempt bagels!
I tried this once, and it was a complete failure. It could have been me or the recipe, but I just wondered if anyone else has tried this and what their results were.
I may try this … don’t worry, strawberry jam is easy! Just be sure to use smaller jam jars … I, for some baffling reason, put mine in quart-size jars!
How do you make bagels? Do you boil them in water? What happened to yours?
I LOVE Alton brown. Everything that I’ve ever made of his has been amazing. I’m going to try these out for sure.
Oh and my strawberry jam recipe looks RIDICULOUSLY easy. No jars, no pectin. Should be foolproof. Or at least Angela-proof.
Generally speaking, baking with wax paper is a bad idea because it tends to smoke like crazy (unless completely covered). It sounds like it worked out, but you may want to pick up parchment paper for next time because the smoke smell is gross and it can make things taste funny.
Maygan, I have to agree with you. Next time, parchment paper!
We have tried those graham crackers and they are yummy but you are right about the measurements needing to be exact =)
A few things that I want to try making are noodles, tortillas, flat bread, and marshmallows.
Now I’m going to have to try graham crackers.
Jam is much easier than I expected. Blackberry is our favorite.
Bagels aren’t too difficult, either. The tricky part is getting them to look pretty. I use a bread machine recipe — I think it’s from either allrecipes.com or tammysrecipes.com. After you make the dough and shape it into circles, you boil each bagel for about a minute and then bake and enjoy.
One thing to remember about Alton Brown’s recipes is that his dry ingredients are weighed not measured. There is not huge difference in 8 3/8 ounces measured and weighed, but it might be enough to throw your recipe off. I printed it off and am going to try it. We go through a whole box of graham crackers a week in my house. Good luck with the jam!
Alton has a great recipe for “pop-tarts” that I would like to try since it has way less sugar than store bought…..happy baking!!!
Yes, you boil bagels. My bagels turned out extremely lumpy and hard. I poked my finger through the middle of the dough and then spun them around my finger to create the hole. It was fun to do, but the end result was not pretty.
Pizza from scratch! Not just the dough, but the sauce too!
I’d love to see the “in process” pictures of that adventure.
For a soft, chewy dough, this is a great recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Naan/Detail.aspx
(You can just leave out the garlic. Or keep it in! )
And for homemade sauce, I recommend this: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Exquisite-Pizza-Sauce/Detail.aspx
(I could eat this stuff plain with a spoon!)
I have the easiest bread recipe and you can make it with spelt flour.. You can use either white spelt or regular spelt… I like using regular I just love the taste of it with honey on it. And the kitchen aid works fantastic for mixing it all up.. I just need the last little bit before I put it in a bowl to rise. *** fair warning*** If you try it cover it with plastic wrap, I didn’t the first time I made it with regular flour and it rose and rose and stuck to the towel I had over it… It is kind of a sticky dough, but it makes such good bread.. My kids love it…
It is called Amish White Bread and I found it on the internet…
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Amish-White-Bread/Detail.aspx
Enjoy
Marshmallows from scratch are fun. My son loves to help make them. We make mint ones at Christmas every year to have on top of our (homemade) hot cocoa, and they’re delicious. Sorry–bit off topic, but someone up there mentioned marshmallows.
You can make graham flour so you don’t have to buy it in the expensive little bags. It isn’t perfectly the same, but it’s very close. You mix 2/3 cup of flour (white unbleached) with 1/3 cup wheat bran plus 1.5 teaspoons of wheat germ (take 1.5 teaspoons of wheat bran out of the 1/3 cup to make it exact). Graham flour is ground separately, so it really is white flour with the wheat bran and wheat germ mixed back in, oddly enough, as opposed to whole wheat flour which is the whole thing just ground together. The only difference is texture; grinding them separately gives a different texture than grinding them together. Anyway, wheat bran and wheat germ are both pretty cheap in Winco’s bulk bins, and you probably already have white flour, so no more special trips!
Jam is easy if you use pectin. For strawberry jam, if you want a jam texture, I wouldn’t recommend doing it without pectin. I don’t usually use pectin myself, but I don’t care if it has a jam texture or a syrup texture as long as it tastes good. I use an Italian recipe for my strawberry jam, and it’s always syrupy but delicious. Strawberries don’t set very well without pectin.
Graham Crackers from scratch. Huh. I never would have thought it. I’ll have to try this sometime.
I love how Alton Brown explains the science behind how/why things work.
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