Sourdough Crackers (Recipe)

Ingredients:

1 cup (230 g) sourdough starter at 100% hydration, fed or unfed
1/4 cup fat (butter, lard, shmaltz, coconut oil) — softened, at room temp
1 cup (120 g) whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

Method:

With your hands, mix and knead the sourdough starter with the fat. Then mix the salt with the flour, and a 1/4 cup at a time, knead in the flour+salt until you have a stiff dough.

You can also knead in poppy seeds, sesame seeds, etc.

Let rest (covered) for 3 to 7 hours (depending on room temp). It may not rise a lot or it may double or triple.

Preheat oven to 350.

Divide into four pieces and crank them through a pasta roller. Start at 7 and crank once at each setting through level 4. If you go any thinner, you'll get chips instead of crackers. Transfer to parchment-lined cookie sheets. Brush with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt. Use a cookie cutter for round crackers, or cut with a pizza cutter into triangles or rectangles. You can re-crank the scraps.

Bake for 6 minutes, then turn trays around and switch them, and bake another 3 to 6 minutes. 

(The crackers may seem light in color or not crispy enough, but take them out of the oven or they will turn brown and/or burn if you leave them in too long!)

Yield: a small round basket full of crackers.

Notes on these particular crackers:

For the whole wheat flour in this recipe, I used Red Llamas whole wheat flour. The wheat berries are from the Pioneer Valley Heritage Grain CSA share.

I have been feeding my sourdough starter with about half King Arthur AP flour and half bran (by weight). The bran comes from Red Llamas or Redeemer wheat that I've ground using a Kitchen Aid grain grinder attachment. I don't like too much bran in my breads, because it cuts the gluten strands and makes the bread flat, so I sift it out using a mesh strainer and feed it to my starter.

I added some sesame seeds before rolling the dough out.

I used Amish salted butter and halved the amount of salt I added to the dough (you can find it in logs at Russo's — it's the best butter ever!)