For all of you firepit fans and s’mores lovers out there, here’s my absolute favorite homemade graham cracker recipe. It makes an over-the-top s’more, and tastes great on its own. To make the crackers into s’mores: Just sandwich fire-toasted marshmallows and your favorite chocolate bars in between.
Graham crackers are named for Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham, who introduced a coarsely-ground, unsifted wheat flour. He believed the flour could be an antidote to the poor health suffered by people who ate too much white bread. A vegetarian and big believer in high-fiber diets, Graham was also a rather severe guy who recommended “hard mattresses, open bedroom windows, chastity, cold showers & loose clothing” (!) Not exactly a partier.
I’ve made these crackers a variety of ways: With dark brown sugar and a darker honey, they take on a sweeter, darker flavor. Use a lighter-flavored honey and light brown sugar and a lighter cracker results (which is my preference.) I include two teaspoons of cinnamon in the dough. But you can add extra cinnamon by brushing the crackers with egg wash and sprinkling them with cinnamon sugar for a glazed crunchy finish. Oh, and be sure to bake the cookies in the center of a preheated oven. They’ll crisp up nicely as they cool.
I like to use Turkey Red flour from The Mill at Janie’s Farm. It’s 100% whole grain, milled from organically grown hard red winter wheat, stone ground and unsifted. You can buy it direct from Janie’s.
Notes
Spreading this dough before rolling it out is a good job for little helpers. I take handfuls of the playdough-like dough and mash them down one at a time, connecting one handful to another and flattening until I have a rectangle of partially flattened dough. Fun for your kids
Ingredients
- 3 cups Graham flour (I use The Mill at Janie's Farm Turkey Red flour)
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon (Saigon cinnamon is best!)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 pound unsalted butter, slightly softened
- 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar, not too densely packed (Dark brown sugar may be substituted for a darker flavor)
- 1/4 cup honey (I use rapsflower blossom honey--a light honey like this works well)
- Optional glaze: eggwash made with 1 egg and 1 Tbsp water; sprinkling of cinnamon sugar on top
Instructions
- Combine the two flours, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl, whisking to combine. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer with paddle attachment, whip the softened butter with sugar and honey for five minutes. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the flour mixture in three parts, paddling it into the butter sugar mixture until smooth.
- Spread work surface with a covering of parchment paper. Trace around a cookie sheet onto the parchment paper. Leaving a four-inch border around your tracing, cut out the shape from the parchment paper, keeping the 4-inch border. Take handfuls of the playdough-like dough and mash them down connecting one handful of dough to another and flattening with your hands until you have a big rectangle of partially-flattened dough on the parchment that fits inside the cookie-sheet drawing. Completely cover partially-flattened dough with parchment paper. Using a rolling pin, flatten the dough to an even, 1/8 inch thickness.
- Remove the top layer of parchment paper. Cut the dough into a grid of 1 1/2-inch x 2 1/2-inch rectangular crackers, puncturing each cracker with the tine of a fork to make three rows of dots in each cracker.
- Carefully slide the now finished, parchment-backed grid of raw crackers onto a cookie sheet. Set aside.
- Repeat step number three and four until you have rolled out and scored all of the dough into cracker shapes on cookie sheets.
- Cover each of the cookie sheets of raw crackers with parchment paper; place all in freezer and freeze dough for 2 hours.
- Place oven rack in center position. Preheat oven to 350.
- Using a thin spatula, work quickly to remove frozen raw crackers one at a time from frozen cookie sheet, placing them on a fresh, parchment-lined cookie sheet and leaving at least ¼ inch of space between each cracker.
- Repeat this process until all raw graham crackers are now on fresh, parchment-lined cookie sheets.
- If desired, spread raw crackers with egg wash and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
- Bake graham crackers for 12 to 14 minutes until golden brown. Remove from oven and cool.
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