How to Make Graham Crackers

A homemade graham cracker is a wonderful thing…especially when you’ve got s’mores on the brain. And Mrs. Pastry pretty much always does. Start by sifting your dry ingredients into the bowl of your mixer:

Mix for a few second to combine your ingredients, then add your butter pieces.

You want pieces of butter remaining about like so:

Now add your wet ingredients (I combine them all together in a bowl since it’s easier to pour them that way):

And mix for about a minute until the dough comes together.

Here I deviate from the recipe and neither wait for the dough to chill, nor sandwich it between sheets of wax paper for rolling. I simply roll it out on parchment and dust the top with a little whole wheat flour to prevent sticking. Once it’s rolled out to about the size of a cookie sheet, I’m done.

Then all there is to do is trim the dough up into a rough rectangle and cut.

Lastly you want to “dock” the crackers with a fork, since you don’t want any bubbles forming in there…

This is the point where I do chill the crackers, since it’s much easier transferring them off the parchment when they’re firm. Why transfer them at all? Why not bake them in one large sheet? Primarily because you want a little browning around the edges, both for flavor and for texture. Spread them out on one or two sheet pans like so:

Bake in a 350 oven for ten minutes, rotate them, and give them 5-10 minutes more. Done! If these look a little darker to you than the photo above, it’s because the first batch didn’t photograph so well — and the next batch I used a lighter rye flour!