Katz's Sesame Rice Sourdough Crackers

Crackers?

Don't you hate it when someone writes a recipe and says its easy, but you try it (even a couple of times) and you can't get it to work?  Arggh.

This recipe came from Sandor Katz's book "Wild Fermentation" (which I would recommend to everyone).  He modified it from Edward Brown's "Tassajara Bread Book".  It uses leftover cooked rice, sourdough starter, oil and water, rice and pastry flour, along with garlic, salt and sesame seeds for extra flavour.  The real secret ingredient is the sesame oil, which I bought specially for these crackers, and give it the special aroma and taste.

I was a bit leary about the pastry flour.  I wanted to use whole grain flour, but for my first attempt with these crackers I simply wanted to try the recipe.  I had hoped that this would be one more way in which I could use up some sourdough starter instead of throwing it away.

Mis en place

The dough dried out a bit when fermenting

I did make a mistake when I mixed the ingredients, throwing in the rice flour with the other flours instead of later like Katz's method indicates.  I also had the oven a bit too hot too long during the first baking, and forgot to dock it with a fork.

The second baking I didn't have the crackers rolled thin enough, and/or they didn't bake long enough.

Not thin enough, not baked enough.

So its back to the drawing board for me.

These crackers will be worth another try though.  They smell great, and although the first batch was a bit burned, they tasted okay.  The second batch was just not baked well enough to enjoy.

Notes to Myself

• You did enough wrong to say that you haven't properly tried this recipe.  Try again.
• Try this combination of garlic, rice and sesame in a bread sometime.  Smells great.