S’more, please!
When I was in pastry school, one of my pastry chef instructors told us that once we made homemade marshmallows, we would be spoiled forever. That we’d be ruined for the supermarket variety. He was right. This recipe for homemade graham crackers proves the same.
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The graham cracker dough will look shaggy. Knead it a couple of times into a cohesive ball before rolling.
Homemade graham crackers, like the factory-made kind, are made from whole wheat flour, with a touch of cinnamon and a pinch of salt. From there, the similarities begin to diverge.
Packaged graham crackers may taste great, but they are inevitably dry. In other words, they put the cracker in graham cracker. Homemade graham crackers have the same familiar shape and flavor. But they taste buttery, with tender texture that only improves with age. Homemade grahams taste more like cookies.
Measure and slice the dough into even strips, marking your spacing with small knife cuts.
Homemade Graham Crackers: Recipe Notes
These homemade graham crackers taste great on their own. But they are even more perfect dipped in tea, cocoa, or used for s’mores. The dough is easy. The slightly more complex part is working with the dough. Don’t worry. You’ve got this.
Use a rolling pin and a nice dusting of flour to roll the into a rough rectangle and chill it. Chilling makes the dough easier to work with.
After the dough chills, roll it to its final thickness of 1/8-inch thick. Then use a ruler and a pastry wheel to cut it into rectangles. Dock with a fork, transfer to baking sheets, and bake. A straight pizza cutter will be great, but I like a ruffled edge cutter for aesthetics.
If you would like, make cinnamon grahams by dusting the graham crackers with cinnamon sugar before baking. I make cinnamon sugar with a ratio of 1/2 cup sugar to 1 1/4 teaspoons cinnamon.
Did you make homemade graham crackers? What did you think?
Homemade Graham Crackers
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole-wheat flour
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 2 sticks (8 ounces) room-temperature unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup honey
- cinnamon sugar, for dusting (optional)
Instructions
- Mix together the whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon.
- In a separate bowl, combine the butter, brown sugar, and honey and mix until smooth. Add the dry ingredients in two additions. The finished dough will look shaggy.
- Turn the dough onto a clean countertop that has been lightly dusted with flour. Knead the dough a couple of times to gather it into a ball. Flatten the dough into a rectangle about 1/2" thick. Wrap the dough and chill for about 45 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and lightly dust the countertop with flour. Remove the dough from the fridge and dust with flour, top and bottom. Roll to 1/8" thick.
- Use a ruler and a pastry wheel and cut the dough into 1 1/2" x 3" rectangles, first by cutting the dough into 1 1/2" strips, then across into horizontal strips spaced 3" apart. Gather and re-roll any dough scraps. PRO TIP: Before cutting the strips, mark each row and column by cutting notches into the dough top and bottom.
- Dock the graham crackers with a fork.
- Transfer the grahams to two lined baking sheets in pairs. Leave space between each pair. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until they look dry and very lightly browned on the edges.
- Cool in the sheet pan for five minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to chill fully.
Very yummy and like a butter cookie!
These are a little hard to make, at least for me, because of the precise chilling and cutting. That said, they do taste very good and my partner and I enjoyed them with coffee.