Sunday, August 26, 2012

rollin' with my homies

Home made crackers were all over the internet this spring. Either that or I had them on my mind so I noticed every mention I encountered.

After receiving a new food processor for mother's day (lucky me) crackers were my first food processing endeavor. I used this recipe for home made wheat thins. My shiny new cuisinart cut the butter into the flour like a champ and then I was foolish enough to add the water all at once. Sadly the recipe called for way too much water for my baking conditions that day.

 What I found when I opened my processor bowl was about the consistency of wet biscuit dough. So, basically at that point it was ruined. Never one to give up, I charged ahead. Adding more flour would ruin the texture of my final product but I didn't see another way to go so I thew in a bit more flour. Just a smidge to get the stuff dry enough to roll out. Then I did by best to salvage the project from there. This is how they turned out.

 
For what I believe are obvious reasons, I called them "Wheat Thicks"

 

They were tough and chewy.  They got tougher and chewier as time went by. Zizza loved them. "Oh mama they're soooo good. When are you going to make more wheat thicks?" At least they didn't go to waste.

 After an appropriate mourning period I tried the recipe again. This time I carefully added the water one tablespoon at a time. With the added care my results were much better. I even went so far as to call them "thins" rather than "thicks."

Zizza wasn't impressed. She asked me to make thicks next time.

 With no intention of fulfilling the request of my small daughter, I set out to simplify the painstaking process of rolling out the dough to the required thinness.

These eight years a pasta rolling machine has inhabited the forgotten cabinet above my fridge. Today I finally used it.

 
And it was fantastic.

 

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