Graham Crackers and Candied Oranges

My fourth (and I’ve decided, last!) graham cracker test has left me somewhat disappointed.  I was really hopeful that the recipe from the Flour cookbook by Joanne Chang would be the ultimate graham cracker recipe.  I readily admit that I’m a little burnt out on graham crackers, but I didn’t care for these much at all.  They’re actually called “graham wafers” in the cookbook, so perhaps I’m just not a fan of graham wafers. 

This recipe was markedly different from the other three I tried in that it included egg, cream, cornmeal and baking powder (versus baking soda).  The cornmeal seems to be what lost me.  I love cornmeal for cornbread and polenta, but apparently not for graham crackers.  It added an additional crunch and texture that I just didn’t care for.  It seemed to be the deal breaker.  That’s too bad since I have about three dozen of them.

So moving on in my recipe testing, and still from the Flour cookbook, I did some prep work for craqueline, a brioche-based pastry.  The craqueline recipe in Flour is one the author adapted from her work at Payard.  It’s composed of brioche dough wrapped around diced candied oranges and coated with a crunchy sugar and almond topping.  I looked for some other recipes online for comparison and it appears this is Francois Payard’s French interpretation of a traditionally Belgian pastry.  The original Belgian craquelin wraps the brioche dough around sugar cubes and citrus zest.  Being a big fan of candied citrus, I’m going with the French version.

To get started, I needed to candy the oranges.  Ms. Chang’s recipe calls for navel oranges, but I happened to have some beautiful blood oranges I had picked up with the intent of making a little more marmalade that I don’t need.  I would imagine the navel oranges are recommended as they are seedless.  I had to pick a few seeds out of the blood oranges, but not many.  The process couldn’t have been easier, but is somewhat time consuming:  make sugar syrup, boil orange slices in it for about two hours, let cool.  And the results were gorgeous! 

The recipe indicates the oranges can be made up to two weeks ahead and stored in their own syrup in the refrigerator.  In proceeding to read through the recipe, it states to scrape the syrup off of the orange slices before chopping – and to discard the syrup.  Never!  The remaining blood orange syrup is beautiful and I think will be wonderful to have for some warm weather beverages.  And since we’re having enough warm weather here to have turned our air conditioning on today, finishing the craqueline will likely wait for cooler temperatures on Thursday.  That will also give me a chance to finish some gardening projects and take care of some homemaker things that tend to take a back seat to wannabe baker things!

Graham Cracker Recipe Test No. 2

While I considered another attempt at the Miette graham cracker recipe, I ended up deciding with five recipes to try I’d just move on and if none of the others were spectacular, I’d give it another go.  Sorry, Miette, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back to your graham crackers.

from left to right:  the decline of my patience

The recipe I tested today is from One Girl Cookies by Dawn Casale and David Crofton.  Although I wouldn’t use “charming” to describe this book, I love the personal stories and vintage family photos included.  My only complaint (and this is totally a personal pet peeve) is that the recipes are solely in volume measurements.  To compensate, I weighed out my ingredients as I measured them and made notes so next time I’ll be prepared.  And I know that when testing recipes I should actually follow them, but I just can’t help myself.  Instead of all-purpose flour, I used whole wheat pastry flour for more “graham-y” graham crackers.

the little holes were made with a No. 5 piping tip

Even though the dough came together incredibly quickly, the rolling, cutting and baking seemed to take for-ev-er.  After I rolled the dough between parchment sheets, I put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes to firm up before cutting.  (I will confess that I was much more diligent about keeping the butter-based dough cool with this batch of graham crackers.  Not a particularly easy task when our temperatures were in the lower 80’s today, the oven was on, and I just can’t bring myself to turn on the air conditioning in mid-March.)  The biggest problem was the dough would only be out of the freezer for about a minute before it started to soften up and get sticky.  I had to put the dough back in the freezer several times just to get the scraps out from in between the cut crackers.  After getting one sheet of fluted rounds, I went with cutting rectangles.  I thought being quicker, they would also be easier to work with.  I was only half right. 

believe it or not, the rectangles didn't save much time

By the time I finished baking the two sheets of graham crackers, I was not feeling the love for finishing the scraps of dough.  And having the oven on had made it even warmer - bordering on unpleasant.  Given that, the last of the dough is rolled out between parchment sheets, wrapped in plastic and resting in the freezer.  Maybe I’ll finish them tomorrow in the cool of the morning.

Comparing these graham crackers to my Miette graham crackers would be kind of like comparing fleur de sel to iodized table salt:  they're not even in the same league.  These graham crackers baked up light and crispy, and not a bit greasy.  Their texture and crunch are really quite wonderful.  I went with cinnamon instead of ginger this time.  The cinnamon was barely noticeable in the background, but I think any less and it would have seemed like something was missing and any more would have been too much.  I wish I would have remembered to sprinkle them with sugar, but it's a small thing.  Overall, I definitely think this recipe is worth keeping, but maybe just made when cooler temperatures prevail.  Cooler temperatures or not, my next graham cracker recipe to try is from Martha Stewart's Cookies.  As much as I like Martha, her graham crackers are going to have to be pretty awesome to top these!

Homemade Graham Crackers

Recipe adapted from One Girl Cookies by Dawn Casale & David Crofton

315 g whole wheat pastry flour

40 g stone ground whole wheat flour

1/4 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

113 g unsalted butter, at cool room temperature (65 – 68°F)

100 g granulated sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

60 g brown sugar

1/2 cup water, cool but not cold

Sift the flours, salt, baking soda and cinnamon together over a medium bowl and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for 3 – 5 minutes on medium speed.  Stop and scrape the bowl and paddle.  On low speed, add one-third of the flour mixture, followed by half of the water.  Repeat, ending with the flour.  Mix the dough just until the ingredients are combined, finishing with a rubber spatula.  Use the spatula to turn and fold the dough a few times to “knead” it.

Divide the dough in half, keeping one half covered while working with the other.  Place the dough between 12” x 16” sheets of parchment paper and roll out to approximately 1/8” thickness.  Repeat with the remaining dough.  Carefully place the rolled dough (still sandwiched in parchment) on a baking sheet and refrigerate for 30 minutes or freeze for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Remove one sheet of dough at a time from the refrigerator or freezer and place on a cutting board.  Peel off the top piece of parchment paper.  Cut the dough with cookie cutters or cut squares or rectangles with a ruler and knife, trying not to cut through the parchment.  Grab the bottom piece of parchment and flip the cut dough over onto the cutting board.  Peel off the remaining piece of parchment.  Place the graham crackers on the prepared baking sheets and sprinkle lightly with the extra sugar.  (The dough scraps can be re-rolled, chilled and cut in the same manner.)

Bake the graham crackers for 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheets halfway through.  Cool on the baking sheets for five minutes and then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Store in an airtight container. 

Testing Recipes: Homemade Graham Crackers

Not all of these are recent purchases,
but you get the idea.

In the last month or so, I’ve bought at least eight new food-related books:  cookbooks, baking books, cake decorating books.  One of my (many) vices is buying cookbooks.  And then never making a single recipe out of them.  Not.  One.  Recipe.  I can’t tell you how many cookbooks I have that I’ve spent countless hours looking at, but never cooking from.  Since I was a little excessive on buying cookbooks lately, I figured I’d better use some of them.

Inspired by the graham cracker base of the marshmallow pinwheel cookies my dad likes, I’ve been thinking about an attempt at making homemade graham crackers for some time now.  Given that I now have no less than four baking books with recipes for homemade graham crackers, I couldn’t see any reason not to try them.

The first recipe up at bat is from Miette.  This is an absolutely charming cookbook from the San Francisco pastry shop of the same name.  Unfortunately, it’s a cookbook riddled with errors.  I downloaded the errata sheet from the publisher’s website, which is a full page long – and apparently not all inclusive.

Miette’s recipes include both volume and weight measurements.  Apparently there were some difficulties with those conversions.  Although the graham cracker recipe is not included on the errata sheet, I immediately noticed a problem.  The ingredient list includes “2/3 cup (6 ounces) unsalted butter”.  Do you already see the problem with that?  Six ounces of unsalted butter is 3/4 cup.  (I actually sent an e-mail to the publisher to point this out.)  It’s a small amount, but in baking a small amount can make a big difference. 

Despite the discrepancy, I proceeded with the recipe using six ounces for the butter, mostly because that was easier to measure.  I felt this recipe great had potential for variations given the ingredients.  The recipe called for 1-1/2 cups of all purpose flour and 1/3 cup of whole wheat flour.  I used 1 cup of all purpose, 1/2 cup of whole wheat pastry flour and the 1/3 cup of whole wheat flour.  I also used ginger in place of cinnamon.

The dough came together very easily.  I wrapped it up in plastic and let it rest overnight.  I let the dough rest at room temperature for about 10 minutes before rolling it out.  That’s where things started to not go so well.  It’s been unseasonably warm around here lately.  The near record highs in the upper 70’s did not bode well for butter-based dough.  Especially not butter-based dough with too much butter.  I should have used the 2/3 cup measurement.  I had to keep giving the dough brief time outs in the freezer just to be able to work with it.

Perhaps it was because of the butter, perhaps because of the temperature, perhaps a combination of the two, but what I ended up with was not what I had in mind for graham crackers.  The taste was . . . okay, but not great.  They were greasy.  They were crunchy from too much sugar, but not crispy.  These were definitely not worth the amount of time spent on them.

I made shamrocks (and stars) since Saturday is St. Patrick's Day.

Perhaps if this recipe makes it to the errata sheet, I’ll try it again.  In the meantime, my next graham cracker recipe on deck is from One Girl Cookies.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.