1.15.2011

Spelt Berry Crackers (no, really)

This post is a work in progress and is promising.  Depicted here is a pictorial path to the crackers and my thoughts on future plans.  I post this early in hopes of others jumping in with experiments of their own.

I ground 135 grams of spelt berries using the fine setting on a coffee mill (these are abundant at thrift stores, do a dry cleaning with a sacrificial batch of grain, any grain, to remove residual coffee).

Even on fine, the ground "flour" will be pretty coarse. Here you can see the husks as well as the insides, we're going to use it all.

To this grain I added water (92 g), salt (3 g), vegetable oil (20 g), baking powder (1.5 t) and mixed it up. It's a coarse slop.

I plopped this on a piece of parchment paper, placed a piece of plastic wrap on it and gently rolled it out to something like a 15" diameter circle. The plastic was then removed to leave this.

These were baked at 375°F until an edge just started to burn, about 15 minutes. They were removed from the oven, cut with a pizza cutter while still warm and allowed to cool.

In my experience, any cracker's flavor evolves for hours after they finish baking. Their flavor is indescribable and, to my surprise, good! Not great, but that's where the development comes in.

What's next?
1. fats? Not a big fan of butter in most breads, I like vegetable oil in breads because of the texture it creates and the neutral flavor. Other fats might be good... lard? suet?
2. preferment? Why not preferment the grain flour to develop some sugar and flavor and then, just before baking, give it a shot of b powder to get the biscuit/cracker-like crisp.
3. grain? I only had spelt on hand. The original thought was for wheat berries. There are lots of options here for fun mixtures, etc.

Let me know of any ideas you all have and share in the comments.