Homemade Wheat Thin Crackers

February 28, 2013

Homemade Wheat Thin Crackers Barbara Bakes

Thin, crispy, lightly salted crackers made from whole wheat flour are perfect for dipping or just eating the Toasted Whole Grain Crunch one right after the other.

Sarah from All Our Fingers in the Pie was our February 2013 Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to use our creativity in making our own Crisp Flatbreads and Crackers!  My daughter’s favorite crackers are Wheat Thins so for this Crunch is Calling challenge I made homemade Wheat Thins.

Wheat-Thins-Crackers-Spinach-Dip-Barbara-Bakes

Tracy posted the recipe for Wheat Thins from the King Arthur Whole Grain Baking Cookbook on Tracy’s Culinary Adventures. She said the flavor was spot on and she was right. My daughter said this is what Wheat Thins must taste like at the factory right after they’ve been made.

I served my homemade Wheat Thin crackers with some piping hot Spinach Artichoke Dip that I “baked” in the Pressure Cooker.

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The changes I made to the recipe were to make the crackers even easier to whip up. I made the dough in the food processor and then used my KitchenAid pasta attachment to roll the dough thinly. The dough is a bit crumbly, so I found if I rolled out the dough into a 1/4 inch rectangle before feeding it through the pasta maker, it worked much better. The pasta maker did a great job of creating a perfectly even thin cracker.

Homemade Wheat Thin Crackers

Print Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/4 cups (5 oz) whole wheat flour
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt, plus extra for topping
  • 1/4 teaspoon paprika
  • 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Combine flour, sugar, salt and paprika in a food processor; pulse to mix. Add butter and pulse 6 to 8 times, until mixture resembles coarse meal, Combine the water and vanilla in a small measuring cup. Add to the butter/flour mixture and pulse until a smooth dough forms.

Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Work with one piece at a time, keeping the others covered with a towel so they don’t dry out. Lightly flour your work surface and rolling pin and roll the dough into a rectangle 3 minutes wide and 1/4 inch thick. Set the pasta machine to its widest setting. Sprinkle with flour and feed it into the pasta roller.

Turn the pasta roller down one notch. Sprinkle the dough with flour and roll it again. Repeat this process until the crackers are as thin as you want. (I thought the #3 setting was the thickness of a Wheat Thin.) If you want all of your crackers to be perfect, trim the edges of the dough so you have a rectangle with even sides.

Use a pizza cutter to cut the rectangle into squares about 1 to 1 1/2 inches wide. Transfer the dough squares to the prepared baking sheets. You don’t need to leave much space in between the crackers – they don’t spread at all in the oven. Sprinkle the squares lightly with salt. Repeat with remaining dough pieces.

Bake the crackers, one sheet at a time, until crisp and browned, about 5-10 minutes. Check the crackers at 5 minutes, and if some of the thinner ones are browning too quickly, remove them to a plate and return the remaining crackers to the oven to finish baking. The crackers can burn quickly so you want to keep a close eye on them. Once brown and crisp, transfer to a plate to cool. Store the crackers in an airtight container.

Thanks Sarah, I’d been wanting to make crackers using my new pasta attachment, so this was the perfect challenge for me! Please visit the Daring Kitchen to see a slideshow of the fabulous crackers and flatbreads the Daring Bakers created for this challenge.