GNOWFGLINS™

Jeffrey wants a cracker. He’s been telling me for months, and I finally listened.

These Cheezy Gluten-Free Crackers are so good. Let me extol their benefits.

1) Boosted protein from the bean flours and the almond meal.

2) Versatile — use any 6 gluten-free (or gluten-full, for that matter) flours you desire or have on hand. The flours will all want different amounts of water, so that’s where you’ll have to adjust.

3) Crispy and thin just like the commerical “Wheat Thins.”

4) “Cheezy” from the nutritional yeast.

5) Delicious basic cracker recipe — use this recipe as a base (omitting the dill) and season it up with your favorite herbs. That’s what I’ll be working on this week. As I come up with variations, I’ll come back and edit this recipe.

Cheezy Gluten-Free Crackers

• 1/4 cup amaranth flour
• 1/4 cup sweet brown rice flour
• 1/4 cup corn flour
• 1/4 cup bean flour (garbanzo, fava or combination)
• 1/4 cup sorghum flour
• 1/4 cup almond meal (can be coarse, for texture)
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more for sprinkling
• 1 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1-1/2 teaspoons dill (optional)
• 2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
• 7 to 8 tablespoons water (I needed 7-1/2)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare one 16-inch pizza stone by greasing it or lining it with parchment paper. Or use two 11-inch by 13-inch baking sheets — flipped over and greased or lined with parchment paper.

Mix all dry ingredients. Add oil and mix in, as well as you can. Add water, 2 tablespoons at a time, and mix. Keep adding water until the dough holds together. You may wish to mix it with your hands at some point. If it gets too wet, it will be too sticky.

Press the dough into a flat circle on the pizza stone (or divide the dough into two parts, each pressed into a flat rectangle on a baking sheet). Using a combination of wet fingers and a greased rolling pin, roll the dough out very thin, about 1/8″ thick. If it breaks apart, press it back together with your fingers. Make sure the middle isn’t more thick than the edges — remember, we want thin!

Cut into squares with a pizza cutter. Sprinkle lightly with fine sea salt.

Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the edge crackers which are probably brown and crisp already. Return the middle crackers to the oven to finish baking, about 5 to 10 more minutes. You may wish to turn them over for this last part of the baking.

Let cool. Store in an airtight container and just try to keep from eating them on the spot!

© Copyright 2008 by Wardeh Harmon