Crackers/Flatbread

If I had known how easy it was to make my own crackers I would have done it a long time ago!  We picked up some cheddar made from goat's milk and some really good smoked cheddar at a good price at Whole Foods a few days ago and I was dying for a good cracker to enjoy with a slice of my cheese.

The commercial crackers and baked goods really bother me (go figure).  They come in a box and never mold or get bad (that is a CLUE).  The ingredient list usually includes processed flour and soy or canola oil and some other questionable long words I can't pronounce that probably serve as preservatives of some sort.  I just knew we could do better!

So tonight I found a recipe for Rosemary Flatbread that sounds so delicious I had to try it!  Journey helped me roll them out and mix the dough and I was happy to have her help and company in the kitchen and to show her how easy, once again, cooking can be.  So we baked these up:

The first challenge we found was that we did not have any dried rosemary in stock.  I have one little plant in the greenhouse that is pretty little and I had used the last of my dried rosemary a few days ago.  Then I remembered my antique herb dryer on the wall of the dining room that has some sprigs of dried herbs on them for show.  I believe my mother grew and dried these herbs herself so I trusted the source pretty well.  I took a little taste first and discovered the flavor of that ancient dried rosemary was really good and potent.  SCORE!

Funny story about this:  Mike watched me pull them down and said "what are you doing?"  I thought he was worried about the potential age or source of the dried herbs going into his cooking so I said "I am going to use it in the flatbread... it is ok.. I tasted it".  His response was "I am not worried about that... I am just tired of hitting that dried stuff every time I walk by it".   So funny...  I only had to harvest a few sprigs of it for the crackers so he will still have to avoid hitting it hanging against the wall... but only until I make a few more batches of these delicious crackers!  You can believe that if I have an edible decoration, I will eventually eat it!  Haha.

So with rosemary abundant I freshly ground up a cup and three quarters of sprouted wheat berries and laid out the ingredients for these crackers and Journey and I whipped them up in a jiffy.  Here is the recipe:

Rosemary Flatbread

1 3/4 cups flour
1 TBSP chopped rosemary plus a little to put on top
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt plus some more for the topping
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup olive oil plus some more to brush the tops before baking.

Preheat the oven and a baking sheet to 450 degrees.

Stir the first 4 dry ingredients together in a bowl.  Make a well in the center and add the water and oil.  Stir into a dough and turn out to knead 4 or 5 times.

Divide the dough into 3 pieces and roll each piece out thinly on parchment paper.  This is the part that Journey so expertly did!

Brush the tops with olive oil, throw a little extra salt and rosemary on top and bake 8 - 10 minutes.  I baked one at a time and just slid the finished cracker right off the baking sheet still on the parchment paper and slid the next one on to bake.  It was very simple to cut them up with a pizza cutter while they were still warm.

The instructions say to cool completely before storing in an airtight container on the counter-top.  As has been my experience with most other fresh baked goods, they last the best when refrigerated, as they have no preservatives (Praise the Lord!)

I cheated on this recipe and added some garlic powder and a little pepper to the dough with the rosemary and they are delicious.  I may experiment more with this recipe, as it was super easy and produced wonderful results!  We now have a cracker to park our cheese atop!