Multigrain Rosemary Sage Crackers

One of the year-long herbs in my garden is rosemary, which I love paired with olive oil and a bit of salt. All three flavors come through in these deeply flavorful, yet delicate, cracker that I am sure to be making many variations in the months to come. Let's call this Weekend Herb Blogging, because it still is the weekend and I haven't played a meme all week. Kayln's got interesting herbs collected on her blog every weekend, do go check out this week's offerings.

These crackers were inspired by a combination of things: the flavor profile was derived from a recipe for Herbed Olive Oil Crackers from Jerry Traunfeld's The Herbfarm Cookbook, the addition of yeast was due to a recent batch of Lavash from The Breadbaker's Apprentice, and the use of the pasta machine comes from a recent conversation with Farmgirl.

Multigrain Rosemary Sage Crackers
60 crackers (approx. 3" sq. this is a really rough estimate)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup bread flour
1/2 cup rye Flour
1/4 cup semolina flour
3/4 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
2 tbsp fresh sage, chopped
6 tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup water, plus additional as needed

olive oil
kosher salt

Preheat oven to 350 F, with pizza stone if you have one.

Combine dry ingredients and herbs in food processor with plastic blade and pulse for a few seconds to mix. Add olive oil and process briefly (it will look like lumpy cornmeal), then add milk and 1/4 cup water and process for 15-20 seconds. The dough should come together as a very stiff, yet cohesive, ball, drizzle in water, a teaspoon at a time as needed. Process briefly once the desired texture is achieved. dough should be warm to the touch and fairly stiff.

Turn dough out onto lightly floured counter and knead briefly. Cover and let rest for about an hour.

Flatten dough by hand on lightly floured surface. Divide into quarters, roll each of the pieces into a rectangle that will fit into your pasta machine (about 3 inches wide is a good start) and let rest for 5-10 minutes.

Set pasta machine for thickest setting and roll each piece of dough through once. Working in rotation, roll each piece through the pasta machine once with the next thinner setting, let rest while you roll the other three and then set to the next thinnest setting and repeat until crackers are of desired thinness - on my Atlas machine, this is setting 6. Place dough sheets on parchment paper and score with a pizza cutter or knife. Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with kosher salt.

Bake directly on hot stone for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Edges will brown faster and they go from done to overdone fairly quickly so keep an eye on the first batch to determine cooking time in your oven. (If you don't have a pizza stone, cook for an extra minute or two.)

Nutritional Information Per Serving: 37 Calories; 2g Fat (37.1% calories from fat); 1g Protein; 5g Carbohydrate; trace Dietary Fiber; trace Cholesterol; 36mg Sodium. 

Exchanges: 1/2 Grain(Starch); 0 Lean Meat; 0 Non-Fat Milk; 1/2 Fat.

Note: I made three different thicknesses, rolled with the pasta machine set to 6, 5, and respectively (and from left to right). I really prefer the thinnest of them, which are very crisp, with a satisfyingly crunchy bite, and an occasional small air pocket for that rustic look. The thickest crackers are almost like mini-semi-pitas; I'd make these if I knew I was going to have some sauce to mop up. The middle ones seemed neither here nor there, not thick enough to be decently bready but too thick to be crisp, kind of chewy and almost stale-tasting when 15 minutes out of the oven.