I’ve always wanted to try baking savory crackers without using all-purpose flour. These wheat and millet crackers make for a great guilt-free, tea-time snack. Serve them as is or with some melted cheese or homemade jam or even with some guacamole or salsa dip!
Ingredients (makes 40-50 small crackers):
- Whole wheat flour (1 cup)
- Millet (jowar) flour (1/4 cup)
- Unsalted butter (3 tbsp)
- Sesame seeds (1 tbsp)
- Cumin (jeera) seeds (1/2 tbsp)
- Turmeric (haldi) powder (a pinch)
- Asafetida (hing) powder (a pinch)
- Red chili powder (per taste)
- Salt (to taste)
- Sugar (1/2 tsp)
- Coriander leaves (finely chopped) (1 tbsp)
- Mint leaves (finely chopped) (1 tbsp)
- Milk (8 tbsp)
Method:
- Mix the wheat and millet flour.
- Add partially melted butter to the flours and work it with the flour using your fingers, till a grainy texture is achieved.
- Toast sesame seeds and cumin seeds separately and add them to the flour-butter mixture.
- Add the dry ingredients, leaves, salt and sugar and mix well.
- Now comes the milk – add gradually to form a dough that is of the consistency of roti/chapati/bread dough.
- Cover the dough and let it sit for half an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F.
- Roll the dough into a thin circle (you can make these crackers as thick or as thin as you want to – I made mine pretty thin).
- Using a cookie cutter, pizza cutter, knife or circular lid, start shaping your crackers to your liking. I tried circles, squares, hearts, triangles – let your creativity flow :)!
- I tried circles, squares, hearts, triangles – let your creativity flow :)!
- Poke some holes on the surface of the uncooked cracker to prevent it from fluffing up in the oven.
- Carefully place the crackers on a cookie sheet and bake for 6 minutes or so.
- Check the cookies at this stage and flip them. Bake for another 6 minutes or so.
- My crackers were very thin, so 12 minutes was sufficient for baking them. You will have to play with the timing, which may vary based on the thickness of the crackers.
- Take them out of the oven and let the crackers cool. Now, transfer them into an airtight jar. These should stay fresh for up to a week or more.
- In the pictures below, I served the crackers to my kids with melted cheese and homemade jam.
Tastes (Rasa):
Sweet (wheat, butter, sugar, sesame), sour (none), salty (salt), bitter (leaves), pungent (chili, cumin), astringent (leaves, turmeric, asafetida).
Doshic Influence:
Wheat is slightly kapha and vata aggravating. Millet is slightly vata and pitta aggravating. Sesame seeds are great for vatas and slightly pitta aggravating in excess. We have some cooling herbs like coriander leaves and milk to balance the pitta. We have some warm spices like cumin, turmeric and asafetida for balancing kapha and vata. All these spices also aid in digestibility and add a lovely aroma and flavor to the crackers. These crackers are high on fiber content as well due to the whole flours used. Butter is used in this recipe, but minimally, as compared to other recipes in the same genre, without compromising on taste.