Flax, Chia and Sesame Seed Crackers

We love seedy, herby crackers and for years I’ve tried to find good, fresh, crunchy crackers in the stores and sometimes I like what I find and sometimes I don’t but lately I’ve been trying several homemade cracker recipes, adding ingredients that I like and taking away ingredients I don’t like.  This weekend, I think I hit on an almost perfect cracker recipe.

If you’ve never made crackers, my guess is you’ll be surprised at how easy they are to make. Even when I’ve made crackers that didn’t thrill me because of the taste, they still turned out great.

Homemade crackers are so good with dips or with baked brie, or with a bit of mozzarella, basil and tomatoes on them. Take a bowl of homemade crackers, along with a topping of some kind to your next get together and your friends will likely be quite impressed.

Today at lunch Vince grabbed a few of these leftover from yesterday and he said “Hey!  They’re even better today!” We usually don’t have any left over because I make them in fairly small batches.

This recipe works great if you have a Vitamix or mill of some kind.  I could not find garbanzo bean flour here so I grind garbanzo beans in the Vitamix to make flour.  Half of a one pound bag of dried garbanzo beans will make at least three batches of crackers.

Change the herbs up, or change the seeds . . add chopped pumpkin seeds or add toasted sunflower seeds instead of chia seeds. Make them to your liking but please . . make them! You’ll be so happy you did.

Flax, Chia and Sesame Seed Crackers

1/2 cup almonds, ground either in Vitamix or food processor
1/2 cup garbanzo been flour
1/4 cup golden flaxseed
1/2 cup hot water
1/8 cup chia seeds
1/8 cup sesame seeds (toasted are nice)
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese (or a combination of Parmesan/Asiago)
3 T. olive oil
1 tsp. chopped fresh rosemary
1/4 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
1 small clove garlic, chopped
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350º.
2. Soak flax seed in hot water for about 10 minutes.
3. In Vitamix or food processor, add cheese, olive oil, rosemary, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper.  Blend
4. Pour in flax seeds, and process until seeds are broken somewhat but some remain whole.

At this point, I transfer everything to the bowl of my stand mixer.

1. To the mixing bowl, add the ingredients from the blender or food processor.
2. Stir in the garbanzo bean flour and ground almonds.
3. Mix the ingredients til well blended, adding warm water, a few drops at a time until the dough is well blended.  It will be a wet dough but you don’t want it to be too loose.

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.  Wet your fingertips, place the dough on the parchment paper and mash out as much as you can. Cover the dough with another sheet of parchment paper. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out as thin as you can get it.  I don’t think you can make it too thin.

Carefully peel away the top sheet of parchment paper. Using a pizza cutter, cut through the dough to make the crackers whatever size you’d like.

Bake for about 15 minutes.  Check to see if any of those on the edges are getting brown.  If so, remove them to a cooling rack and continue baking the crackers until they are light brown and crispy.

Let the crackers cool completely for maximum crispness.