I love me some crackers, but thanks to my frugal hippy self, I don’t love the additives, weird oils and packaging that comes along with them. My Auntie Barb to the rescue, with these lovely seedy crackers!
I can’t help but change a recipe when I first get it, it happens to be in my nature to switch around ingredients for what I have, whats cheaper/in season/tastier, more importantly healthier but will still work with the original recipe. When a recipe already has buttermilk in it, it’s practically a gimme for switching to soaking overnight! Why would you want to? Well, soaking your dough/flour in an acid medium (buttermilk, water with apple cider vinegar, etc) overnight will break down the hard to digest enzymes and make more of the nutrition available to you. It’s like getting more bang for your buck with the food you eat, and while I don’t do it for every recipe, I do it where I can to make the most of our food. I also find that breaking it into small very manageable chunks of time instead of one large project is simpler. Theres a three step process in getting these into your mouth, and while it takes a while, it doesn’t take a lot of hands on time, so you can get your Yogurt Cheese started and enjoy them both when they’re ready! I like to double or triple this and keep the loaves in the freezer, making a couple loaves of crackers when needed.
1) Grind the wheat or spelt in your Wondermill, measure and mix ingredients, let sit 12-24 hours.
2) Mix in Baking Soda, grease pans, bake loaves. Cool+Freeze.
3) Minimum 12 hours later, upto 3 months, slice frozen loaves and dehydrate/bake!
The nuts, seeds and dried fruits are versatile in that as long as I’m sticking with the same ratio of small seeds:nuts:dried fruit, it always works out well. I also adore the nutty taste of whole grain fresh ground flours and for a cracker that is so delightful and nutty already, why dilute it with white flour that isn’t needed!
Soaked Raincoast Crisps
2 cups Fresh Ground Hard Red Wheat or Spelt flour. (Substitute traditional Whole Wheat or Spelt Flour)
2-3 tbsp fresh rosemary, (1 1/2-2 tbsp dry) no need to chop, just strip off the stem
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2-2 cups buttermilk
1/4 c Honey (1/3 c brown sugar)
1 cup dried cranberries, blueberries or raisins
3/4 cup Almonds, Walnuts or Pecans
3/4 c Pumpkin, Sunflower, Sesame, Poppy, Flax, Hemp or Chia Seeds
2 tsp Baking Soda
Method: Stir together flower, rosemary and salt. Mix in honey and buttermilk. Stir in all fruit, nuts and seeds until well combined. Let sit 12-24 hours, covered, on the counter.
Before baking, sprinkle baking soda on top and stir well to combine. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 4 mini loaf pans and divide batter among them. Bake for 30-35 minutes until a tooth pick comes clean when inserted. Cool, then wrap and freeze until ready to use.
When ready to make crackers, take loaves from freezer and while still frozen, slice each loaf into 24 as even as possible slices. Then to crisp them up, either;
a) My preferred method, spread out on dehydrator trays, turn dehydrator on high (170F) for 1 1/2-2 hours until crisp. This time will vary depending on your dehydrator. It’s hard to over dry them though. When dry, let cool, then immediately store in air tight container or bag until ready to use.
b) Preheat oven to 300F. Lay slices out on baking sheets and bake for 15 minutes, then flip and bake for 15 minutes more, until crisp. Let cool then immediately store in an airtight container or bag until ready for use.
Enjoy!
