Ike and I have a lot in common. He loves a brisk walk; I love a brisk walk. He enjoys digging with his paws in the dirt; I get a kick digging my hands into dough. Ike likes biscuits; I like biscuits. Ike prefers his to be hidden inside his red Kong ball while I prefer mine without that sort of mental and physical challenge.
I took a basic cracker recipe from Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads and messed around with the flavors, adding grated carrot and using “beef” broth for Ike’s biscuits. I rolled out the dough for the dog biscuits quite a bit thicker than the dough for us humans so that they’d fit snugly inside Ike’s Kong ball – don’t want to make treat time too easy for him. For me yes – treat time should be ridiculously easy.
Biscuits for Beast
Makes 40 small crackers
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
3 tbsp. sunflower seeds, ground
3 tbsp. pumpkin seeds, ground
3 tbsp. flaxseed meal
1/4 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. grated carrots
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp. “beef” broth (I used Not-Beef brand bouillon)
1 1/2 tbsp. agave nectar, optional
2 tbsp. canola oil
Biscuits for Man
Makes too many to count
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup rye flour
3 tbsp. sunflower seeds, ground
3 tbsp. pumpkin seeds, ground
3 tbsp. flaxseed meal
1/4 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. grated carrots
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp. water
1 1/2 tbsp. agave nectar
2 tbsp. grapeseed oil
So the technique on these is the same – I whisked together the dry ingredients in a big bowl, mixed together the wet ingredients in another bowl and added this to the dry. Then I kneaded the dough for about 3 minutes, adding whole wheat flour as necessary and then I lightly oiled two bowls, plopped in the doughs (labeling them, as my short term memory isn’t what it used to be), covered with plastic wrap and let them sit on the counter overnight. This extra bit of fermenting adds flavor to the finished product, though you could mix up the dough and bake the crackers the same day.
When ready to roll out and cut, line a couple of baking sheets with parchment and preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly flour the counter and roll out to about 1/8″ thick (except for the dog biscuit dough, which I rolled to a little over 1/4″ thickness). Lightly dust the top of the dough with flour if it sticks to the rolling pin. The path of least resistance here is to use a pizza wheel or a knife to simply cut the dough into squares or rectangles. You end up with Wheat Thin-like shapes. It’s the best way to maximize the number of crackers. For fanciness reasons, I cut the dog biscuits into circles and a couple into bone shapes, frankly, a real pain in the tuchus – and you end up wasting some of the dough.
Bake the crackers for 10 minutes, then rotate the pan(s) for even baking. I found that I needed to bake these (especially the dog biscuits) for a lot longer than called for in the original recipe, i.e., longer than 20 minutes. I gauged “doneness” by the deep brown color of the crackers and the crisp feel when tapped. When you’re satisfied that you have a nice, crispy cracker, remove the pans and let them cool on wire racks. They will crisp even more as they cool.
To top the “man” crackers, lightly spritz them with olive oil as soon as they come out of the oven, and sprinkle on sesame seeds, poppyseeds, kosher salt, spices or even nutritional yeast.
I’m very pleased to be spending the day over at Angela’s beautiful blog, Canned Time, with a little post I wrote called The Dog Who Walks with the Human. You might guess that my buddy, Ike, inspired me to write this particular post. There’s nothing like taking a walk with your best friend out in the open fields and through the woods to get one’s creative juices flowing.
