Graham crackers

Graham crackers (Please view my earlier post, saltine crackers for elaborate discussion on 'crackers') are mildly sweet cracker, that are named after its  creator,  Sylvester Graham.  They are made from graham flour, which is coarsely ground whole wheat flour.  Honestly, I haven’t tasted one, but curious enough to try them out due to their magnified applications in S’mores,   crust for cheese cake, etc

 Their texture and taste achieves an  perfect balance,  that lies between an cookie and cracker.  And when I browsed through Smitten Kitchen’spage, I was confident that I could make them, thanks to her simplistic method.  J  Only ingredient I had to replace here is bleached all –purpose flour instead of unbleached one since, I could not find one at my place  :/  To those, who are quite new at this,  APF is generally processed, in order to yield that bright white colour, before packing commercially.  For this processing, this flour is made to pass through  chemicals or preservatives.  So, the normal flour, you buy at grocery stores are all bleached ones.  Unbleached flour, on the other hand, is less processed with an pale colour, which makes it not only healthy, but also used extensively in baking.  I learnt that unbleached ones yield an little rough texture on the output (Which makes them important in our ‘cracker’ preparation), unlike bleached one, that yields softer  output.  However, an basic substitute of unbleached one will be an mix of bleached flour and whole wheat flour.

 

 Since this is an mix of APF and wheat flour, I would consider this as an guilt-free snack, that I could offer to my family.  Not only sweet, they were also flavourful  with an dash of cinnamon at the top.

Saltine cracker

First of all, I would like to thank Swathi Iyer for letting me suggest  this  month’s challenge.  Thanks a lot, Swathi J  For this month’s challenge, I have suggested two types of cracker – SALTINE, GRAHAM CRACKER.

So, what is this CRACKER?....

1. A cracker is an baked snack that can be sweet and savoury (Mostly savoury).  Alternatively, they are also termed as an ‘savoury cookie’.
2. Name of this snack, is believed to come from the caused noise, when these are broken into half.
3. Crackers are thin, crisp with an usual square or circle shape.  They are known to be topped with herbs, salt, spices or other seasonings.  
4. They are usually served with dips/cheese-spread/butter/milk.  
5. These cracker can be yeast-raised or baking powder raised, so in order to prevent raising of dough during baking , these crackers are drilled with holes before switching them to oven, these holes, otherwise called as docking holes, is one characteristic feature of CRACKERS. 

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CRACKER AND COOKIE:

The difference chart shown below depicts the basic differences between cracker and cookie

Commercial examples for crackers include Maska-chaska, Monaco and Brittania crackers, etc.