One thing that’s moving through us right now is the complexity of sweet memories of Thanksgiving (also known as ThanksTaking) paired with our more recent understanding of how this holiday is a day of mourning for many folks, particularly for those who are Native to this land. We want to acknowledge that ThanksTaking is a holiday where settler colonists celebrate the myth of our ‘good relationships’ with the people who they committed genocide against, tried to erase from existence, stole land from, and continue to occupy un-ceded territories of. At the same time, ThanksTaking has always been Camille’s second favorite holiday: a day where you cook food all day, play games with people you love, and rest.
This year, the COVID pandemic is reminding us how colonists intentionally spread smallpox to Native folks for the purpose of killing and stealing their lands. We are holding the fact that there are Native song holders and language holders who could be killed in this current pandemic which could end some languages and some songs. Despite that, many white settlers are planning to continue their holiday traditions as usual.
One thing we are loving is this podcast episode from All My Relations Podcast: ThanksTaking or ThanksGiving? However you are spending this Thursday, we hope you are taking sweet care of your animal bodies. We thought we would share these crackers today because they are delicious and they go perfectly with Camille’s sister’s favorite ThanksTaking appetizer or any creamy cheese dip.
Makes: 2 non-commercial sheet pans of crackers
Time: 1 1/2 hrs (30 minutes active time)
Ingredients
1 cup fine almond flour
1/3 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup oats
6 tbsp cornmeal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 tsp mustard powder
1/8 tsp cayenne
1 1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp Miyoko’s Creamery butter, cold
1 cup water
8-10 ice cubes
1 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
and salt for topping
extra gluten free flour for sprinkling on counter top (rice or all-purpose gluten-free baking flour)
Put 8-10 ice cubes in a bowl with a cup of water and 1 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar.
Put the oats and the cornmeal in a blender or food processor and blend until it becomes floury. Add all the dry ingredients including what you’ve just blended into a big bowl. Add the cold butter into the dry ingredients and cut the butter into the flour.
There are many ways to cut the butter into the flour. You can use knives, a pastry cutter, or your hand. We use our hands to quickly pinch the butter into the dry ingredients. You should have butter chunks about the size of a pea. Do not keep going until the butter feels sandy, this is too far. You need to do this step fairly quickly so that you don’t melt the butter with your hands.
Once you’ve cut the butter into the flour mixture, add the 6-8 tbsp of ice water 1 tbsp at a time tossing with a fork in between each tablespoon. Eventually this will start to come together. When more than half of your mixture has come together you can start to smoosh with your hands to try and make a ball. Continue to add one tablespoon of water at a time until all the dough sticks together in a nice ball. You do need this to stay cool, however because this is gluten-free you don’t need to worry about ‘overworking’ the dough. You will have a decent amount of ice water left over, and that is okay.
Once this comes together, put your dough on a plate in the fridge. Once it’s in the fridge, pre-heat the oven to 350 F. This means the dough will sit in the fridge for about 20 minutes or as long as it takes for your oven to pre-heat.
Once the oven is hot, cut the ball of dough in half. If you have 2 sheet pans and 2 silpats (or enough parchment paper) you can roll each half of the ball out and cook at the same time. Keep the half you aren’t rolling in the fridge while you roll the first half. If you only have 1 sheet pan/silpat you will have to cook in batches. It is also okay to leave the dough in the fridge covered overnight and cook the second batch the next day.
Sprinkle the silpat or parchment paper with rice or all-purpose gluten-free flour then place half the dough in the center of the floured silpat or parchment paper. Next sprinkle the dough and rolling pin with rice or all-purpose gluten-free flour and then roll out the dough onto the silpat. If you don’t have a rolling pin you can use a wine bottle. If it starts to stick to your rolling pin, you can add more flour to the dough or rolling pin. Rolling out crackers is a skill that takes practice, so be gentle with yourself. The goal is to roll out the dough evenly so that it cooks evenly. Aim for the thickness of a thin cracker like a cheez-it, about 1/8 inch thick. During this process the dough will naturally crack near the edges, push the cracked edges back in to seal the cracks. This makes a thick section in your dough, roll it out again. In this way you can control the shape and edges of the dough. If this is challenging, just know they taste great even if the shapes don’t come out in a ‘normative’ way.
Place the silpat or parchment paper with rolled out dough onto a baking sheet. Cut the dough by pressing down with a dull knife. Don’t pull the knife, rather press down multiple times to cut through the dough in a straight line. This is because you don’t want to cut the silpat and don’t want to pull the dough out of shape. Use a fork to puncture the dough. Sprinkle with salt. If you have a second silpat and sheet pan roll out the second batch of your crackers at this point. While you do this you will either want to be baking the first batch (be careful with timing as it can be tricky) or put the first batch in the fridge while you roll out the second and then bake both together.
Bake for 9 minutes and rotate the pan 180 degrees (and possibly switch shelves if your oven is hotter on top or bottom). Then cook 10 more minutes. They will be slightly darker in color but not significantly. If you give them a poke they will feel firm. Let them cool on the sheet pan for 15 minutes. They will get crispy as they cool down. Do not skip the cooling step this is part of the cooking process.