Baking Brownies and Crackers

We didn't just stop at Pizza dough when us bloggers were up at King Arthur in VT. While our pizza dough was rising we busted out some whole grain crackers and whole wheat double chocolate brownies!

First we learned a little about the wheat berry and it’s parts.

We also learned about Whole Wheat Flour. The biggest tidbit of information I learned is that I had definitely used rancid WW flour before!? Ew!! That smell, that kind of strong smell that you think whole wheat flour has?? Well that would be RANCID whole wheat flour! We smelt rancid and fresh, and fresh WW flour smells like regular flour…basically it really should not have much of a smell at all…just flour-y :)

So keep it in your freezer and we can avoid this issue. Now I just need to find some nice freezer safe big flour canisters.

The cracker dough is very simple and very similar to the pizza dough except there is no yeast here.

This time we had baking buddies! Michelle and I tore it up in the kitchen and produced some delicious cracker dough.

While this dough baby rested, we gathered various seeds and herbs to use to season our crackers.

Divided the dough in half (half for me and half for Michelle) and then cut our halves into 4 little pieces.

I had some King Arthur seed mixture, fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme, and oregano from their gardens), herbs de Provence, and coarse salt

Spread your seeds out on the board and roll the dough into the topping!

We each had a sheet pan full.

Time to bake! Will you just LOOK at that oven!!!?! The thing is MASSIVE, and goes really deep inside. When turned off at night is never cools down, and if it does need to heat up from being cold it takes 2 DAYS!! Everything is manually regulated, and the doors push in to prevent heat from escaping. Really makes our home ovens seem like Easy-Bake ovens compared to this bad boy.

I jumped at the chance to wheel in a batch of crackers, you may have seen a picture of it on one of the other girls blogs!

Oh and then we made the most decadent brownies I’ve ever created….

*EDIT - I found the brownie recipe online through the King Arthur website here! This is the same recipe we made in class*

Hello butter and brown sugar

The last ingredient was 2 CUPS of these chocolate chips! It’s amazing because they sort of melt into the batter, so it’s not overly chocolate-chippy but you still find some chips here and there.

This is the key ingredient to really intensify the chocolate.

Mmmmm. We were told to wait until tomorrow to eat them (if that was possible), because as they sit overnight you wont be able to taste the bran as much as you would fresh out of the oven.

Also some completed crackers, which I broke up into pieces and bagged them.

1 day later:

o.m.g. like fudge, but cake, but fudge…so delicious and so rich.

These crackers and brownies were SIMPLE and oh so good.