Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [70]
Makes about 80 pieces of candy
HONEY GRAHAM CRACKERS
Sylvester Graham would be appalled by the “cracker” that today bears his name. Born in Connecticut in 1794, Graham was a Presbyterian minister who preached that people should avoid meat, highly processed grains, and feather beds in order to quash the sex drive. Even married couples were to resist. Graham: “Sexual excess within the pale of wedlock is really a very considerable and an increasing evil.” In nineteenth-century American cookbooks you’ll find recipes for Graham “wafers” that go something like this: “Beat flour with cold water. No salt. Bake in a hot oven.” Such a cracker might quash not just the sex drive, but the life drive.
How we got from there to Honey Maid is a good question, but I’m not sorry we did. Every American child knows that the contemporary graham cracker is a cookie in the guise of a wholesome snack, as does every American parent. Most of us respect the code of silence. This homemade graham cracker is adapted from Karen De Masco’s The Craft of Baking. It is definitely a cookie.
Make it or buy it? Depends. If you want to reminisce about mediocre childhood snacks but don’t want to eat a mediocre childhood snack, make these. If you are serving small children, I recommend Honey Maid Cinnamon Grahams.
Hassle: Mixing these is effortless; cutting them into perfect rectangles, a headache.
Cost comparison: Homemade graham crackers: $0.18 per ounce. Honey Maid Cinnamon Grahams: $0.23 per ounce. Annie’s organic graham crackers shaped like bunnies: $0.53 per ounce.
1½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
¾ cup whole-wheat flour
¼ cup wheat germ
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
¼ cup light brown sugar, packed
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup honey
TOPPING
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1. Sift together the flours, wheat germ, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon. Pour anything that remains in the sifter back in with the other ingredients.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter, sugars, and honey until fluffy. In two installments, add the dry ingredients, fully incorporating the first before you add the second. Turn the dough onto the counter, knead once or twice, then flatten into a disk. Wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. (You can refrigerate the dough overnight, but it will need to sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes before you roll it out.)
3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a tiny bowl whisk together the topping ingredients.
4. Cut the dough into two portions. On a lightly floured work surface, roll one chunk of dough into a rectangle about ⅛ inch thick. Using a ruler and a rolling pizza cutter, if you have one (a knife works if you don’t), cut the dough into 3½ by 2-inch cookies. Transfer to an ungreased baking sheet. Prick with a fork to simulate the dimples in a graham cracker and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Repeat with the remaining dough.
5. Bake until slightly colored, about 12 minutes. Remove to a cooling rack. The cookies will still be bendy, but will harden as they cool. They are best after a few hours, but for longer storage, you can keep them in a cookie tin at room temperature for about a week.
Makes approximately 28 crackers
CHAPTER 11
CURED MEATS
Curing your own meat at home raises a host of questions about food safety: Is jerky technically cooked, or is it raw, and therefore can it harbor salmonella? What about E. coli? Can you get trichinosis from a naturally cured prosciutto? It takes some of the joy out of the experience when, after eating a slice of prosciutto, you start wondering if your vision is blurring and muscles weakening as you manifest early symptoms of botulism poisoning. Trust me on this.
But there’s a risk