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Homemade Wheat Thin Style Cracker Recipe

My boys love crackers. Unfortunately, most of the brands featured in the store have lots of ingredients we are trying to avoid – transfats, artificial flavors, bleached and bromated flour and so on. Enter Kitchen Stewardship's Homemade “Wheat Thin” Style Crackers recipe. I love Katie's blog – it's full of helpful tips and great recipes. This one was no exception. The only down side was that the crackers were so delicious they didn't last very long. Here's my take on Katie's recipe.

Homemade Wheat Thin Cracker Recipe with Soaked Flour - light and crispy, easy to make.

Homemade “Wheat Thin” Cracker Recipe

Adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Cookbook

Ingredients

  • 1 ¼ cups whole wheat flour (can use spelt flour, traditional whole wheat or white whole wheat)
  • 1 ½ Tbs honey (or sugar)
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp paprika
  • 4 Tbs butter
  • ¼ cup water
  • ¼ tsp vanilla
  • salt for topping

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Blend dry ingredients (except topping salt). Cut in butter with a knife or pastry blender and blend until evenly mixed. Combine the water, honey and vanilla. Add to flour mixture and blend until smooth.

NOTE:  If you would like to soak the crackers to reduce phytates in the grains, substitute whey for 1 tsp to the entire 1/4 cup of water. (I put whatever whey I have available into my measuring cup, then add water to reach 1/4 cup.)  Allow to sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours. Salt may inhibit the soaking process, so add the salt right before rolling. I used freshly ground whole wheat flour from my Nutrimill.

making crackers

Here's the dough after soaking – it looks pretty much the same.

cracker dough

Divide the dough into four pieces and work with one at a time. If you chill the dough for at least one hour before working with it, it should be a little easier to handle. Roll out the dough one piece at a time on parchment paper or directly on your baking sheet. I used my Superparchment to roll on, and then transferred the Superparchment and dough directly to my Airbake cookie sheets. Try to get the dough as thin as possible, at least 1/16 inch thick and 12 inches square. Use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to cut into squares about 1 1/2 inch wide (I think the pizza cutter is the way to go on this if you have one). I don't have a toddler like Katie, but the boys happily ate the odd shaped pieces.

cracker dough cutting
cracker dough cut

Sprinkle lightly with salt (this really adds to the flavor of the crackers – you might try other flavors like garlic powder or other herbs along with the salt, too). The crackers don't expend while baking so they don't need to be moved apart before baking. You can save the scraps and reroll them one time, if desired. Bake the crackers, one sheet at a time, until crisp and browned, 5 to 10 minutes. (The Airbake pans will help you avoid burning, but will take closer to ten minutes to cook.)  You can remove edge crackers from the pan if they start getting too dark and return the rest to the oven to bake. I had to do this with some pans where my dough was rolled a bit unevenly. Watch them closely – they can burn fairly quickly because they are so thin.

Crackers are done when they are almost crispy but not too brittle. They will crisp more as they cool. If they are underbaked, they will be softer and less crackerlike. You can always throw them in the dehydrator for a while if need be, too, but the oven works best to get that tasty caramelization.

crackers cooling down

Cool completely and store in airtight containers (if they last long enough to store).

crackers in jar

Ta-da! Tasty, pretty homemade crackers.

Confession – these are somewhat labor intensive. It's considerably easier to crack open a box from the store. Still, these are very tasty, and the boys really enjoyed them.

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Homemade Wheat Thin Style Cracker Recipe

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Simple and delicious homemade cracker recipe.

Ingredients

Units Scale
  • 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp honey (or sugar)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp paprika
  • 4 Tbsp butter
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1/4 tsp vanilla
  • salt for topping

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. Blend dry ingredients (except topping salt).
  3. Cut in butter with a knife or pastry blender and blend until evenly mixed.
  4. Combine the water, honey and vanilla. Add to flour mixture and blend until smooth.
  5. Divide the dough into four pieces and work with one at a time.
  6. If you chill the dough for at least one hour before working with it, it should be a little easier to handle.
  7. Roll out the dough one piece at a time on parchment paper or directly on your baking sheet.
  8. Try to get the dough as thin as possible, at least 1/16 inch thick and 12 inches square. Use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to cut into squares about 1 1/2 inch wide (I think the pizza cutter is the way to go on this if you have one).
  9. Sprinkle lightly with salt (this really adds to the flavor of the crackers – you might try other flavors like garlic powder or other herbs along with the salt, too).
  10. The crackers don’t expend while baking so they don’t need to be moved apart before baking.
  11. You can save the scraps and reroll them one time, if desired.
  12. Bake the crackers, one sheet at a time, until crisp and browned, 5 to 10 minutes.
  13. You can remove edge crackers from the pan if they start getting too dark and return the rest to the oven to bake.
  14. Watch them closely – they can burn fairly quickly because they are so thin.
  15. Crackers are done when they are almost crispy but not too brittle.
  16. They will crisp more as they cool.
  17. If they are underbaked, they will be softer and less crackerlike.
  18. Cool completely and store in airtight containers.

Notes

If you would like to soak the crackers to reduce phytates in the grains, substitute whey for 1 tsp to the entire 1/4 cup of water.

(I put whatever whey I have available into my measuring cup, then add water to reach 1/4 cup.) Allow to sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours.

Salt may inhibit the soaking process, so add the salt right before rolling.

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12 Comments

  1. Yeah! I hope your crackers turn out well and that they agree with you. I'm thinking about getting a sourdough starter and experimenting with that next.

  2. Laurie, my food test show gluten to NOT be a problem so I am looking forward to trying your crackers!!! Yeah! I even have some sprouted wheat that I did previously and can't wait to try! Thanks.

  3. Annette – I haven't tried sprouted flour yet – it's on my to-do list. I've been eating a lot less grains overall recently, so it's not something I've made time for just yet. I may end up eventually going completely gluten free for my thyroid. I haven't been able to find any good references on whether or not soaked or sprouted grains are less problematic, but I expect that as long as they contain gluten, it could still be a problem.

    I haven't had any trouble soaking when I use recipes that others have proofed (some I have tried straight from NT have given less than stellar results – I've had much better luck with those I've found online). I love my Real food blogger friends. 🙂

  4. These are amazing crackers – I love that entire cookbook (KAF), it's full of things like this! I found it was really hard to soak overnight so I switched to sprouted flour which is surprisingly simple to make yourself if you have a grinder. Have you ever tried doing that Laurie? Thanks so much for sharing this! xo, Annette

  5. We are well. Still trying to decide whether to move or not. Picked up some butchered roosters from a friend of mine today. She's got dozens and dozens of baby peeps in her basement and kitchen. Planning to get my seed orders in soon, but I don't need too much. Friend visiting next week from out of town. Feeling a bit of the mid-winter "blahs", but otherwise all is fine.

  6. Thanks Laurie, for your take on Katie's. I like her site, also.
    Thanks for your comment on my blog. I am doing good. Busy! The internet break was great. We kept up via Facebook and I am not doing it anymore. So blog only I guess. I'll miss you, Diane, Cyn bloggers I enjoyed via Facebook. But it became to distracting.
    My 27 chickens are getting their real voices. Will butcher most of the roosters soon. Keeping one only..we should have around 15 layers.
    Been trying new bread recipes, setting up area for furniture refinishing and we just installed a new used stainless slide in range that was practically in mint condition, picked up at Habitat Restore. And, picked up my autoharp & mountain dulcimer again after not touching them for quite sometime.
    How's all with you?
    Pam

  7. Oh WOW they look so YUM! REally and it's not because I haven't eaten anything but chicken soup w/ rice for 10 days! I wish I could say that I will try them….but I'll just have to dream about them. Wheat thins were always one of my favorite crackers. WERE!

  8. These are beautiful and look just like wheat thins, we made "cheez-its" a couple days ago, and I cannot wait to try these.

  9. shortystylee – Probably the best mechanical substitute for the pastry blender would be a food processor used on "pulse", if you have that available. (Alton Brown always uses this technique on Good Eats.) If you try the stand mixer, please let me know how it works. I prefer my pastry blender for any time I am incorporating a firm fat (butter, lard, coconut oil) into a dry mixture because:

    It's quiet
    Doesn't use electricity
    Give me mini arm workout 😉
    and (the biggie) – Doesn't heat the dough or overmix it.

    When you keep your fats nice and cold, they form tiny little pockets in the dough, this, combined with minimal working of the gluten in the flour by doing a minimal amount of mixing, makes for a lighter, crisper end product. My momma always said, "Don't overwork your crust or you'll make it tough."

    I bet these would be good sprinkled with cheese powder or finely grated cheese, or possibly incorporating some cheese into the dough. My eldest son is a huge Cheez-it fan, and he couldn't get enough of these as is.

  10. Did you need to use a pastry blender for this or do you think you could use a stand mixer on low to blend the butter in? I'm really knew to any baking endeavors and I never know what is right 🙁

    In any case, they look super yummy. My husband eats a ton of Cheez-it like crackers, so he would probably love these.

    Jessica