Everything Bagel Crackers just sound interesting.

Time: 1 Hour 40 minutes

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 3/5

I like to make my own snacks as often as possible. Not only do these home made snacks usually taste better, but they are also typically better for you. I’ve made crackers before a couple times in the past, and although I wasn’t blown away, I didn’t completely regret it. I wonder how this recipe from Texture Over Taste by Joshua Weissman will turn out.

Key Ingredients & Omissions:

The only change I made to the ingredients was to use a pre packaged mix of sesame seeds instead of mixing white and black sesame seeds myself. I just didn’t feel the need to buy them separately when I could buy them together. Other than that, there really wasn’t anything special about the ingredients and I didn’t leave anything out.

Tools:

Bowl
Bench scraper (optional)
Parchment Paper
Pasta Roller (optional)
Rolling pin

Cooking Review:

Mix Dough: 8 minutes

To start, I weighed out the whole wheat and all purpose flour into a bowl along with some salt before whisking it together. The olive oil and warm water was added next and whisked in until it was about as moistened as it was going to get with a whisk.

Kneading: 16 minutes

This is the most difficult/frustrating part of the recipe. I turned out the mixture onto a clean work surface to knead it until smooth. The recipe says this should take 2-3 minutes. However, it was pretty clear that there wasn’t enough water added for this dough to ever come together and become smooth. I decided to fill a cup with more warm water and add a tablespoon of water at a time and knead it until it actually held together and became smooth. I added about 6 additional tablespoons of water. The recipe really should do a better job of letting people know that this may be an issue and what to do if the dough is far too dry.

Rest & Mix Seasoning: 30 minutes

I wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and set it aside while I mixed the everything bagel seasoning.

Roll Out & Topping: 10 minutes

I cut the dough in half using a bench scraper and cut the half into 4 even pieces. I used a rolling pin to roll out the dough into long ovals as thin as I could get them to be. The recipe says you can use a pasta roller to make this easier, but I don’t have one. It definitely takes a pretty good amount of effort to roll these out thinly. Once I had 4 crackers rolled out, I put them onto two parchment paper lined baking sheets and brushed them with egg white before topping with the everything bagel seasoning.

Bake & Cool: 30 minutes (15 minutes per batch)

I baked each batch of 4 for about 15 minutes before removing from the oven. While the first batch was baking, I rolled out the second batch. I let them cool completely before giving them a try.

Analysis:

Despite these crackers being in the crunchy section of Texture Over Taste, they aren’t particularly crunchy. The edges are somewhat crunchy, but the inside is mostly soft. Of course, if I rolled these out even thinner, they probably would have been more crunchy, but this dough is very elastic and not easy to roll and keep thin. As far as the flavor goes, these crackers are really just a vessel for the everything bagel seasoning, which tastes good. The crackers themselves don’t have much flavor, so they definitely need that seasoning on top. It makes sense that the serving recommendations are a lot like a bagel considering the flavor profile. I’m going to give this recipe a 6/10. The recipe itself definitely doesn’t inspire the most confidence as from the jump there’s a good chance your dough will be too dry to do anything with if you follow it exactly. The end result isn’t all that crunchy, which I think is the main point of this recipe. Without a lot of patience and maybe a pasta roller, I don’t think you’d get a very crunchy result. Finally, the flavor is just average. This is nothing special.

Everything Bagel Crackers