Everything Bagel Whole Grain Sourdough Crackers

Adapted from Cultures for Health

Crunchy little whole grain crackers with everything bagel seasoning both inside and out … these lovely little homemade crackers are surprisingly easy to make and a great use for excess sourdough starter. I used Trader Joe’s Everything Bagel Sesame Seasoning but you can make your own blend at home if you are so inclined. My friend Justine over at Full Belly Sisters has a wonderful recipe for Everything Bagel Seasoning.

I’ve found myself in a sourdough bread-making obsession lately, which comes with one little problem. You have to keep feeding your sourdough starter every once in a while to keep it alive. This is not really so much of a problem as it is an opportunity. Some people discard the excess starter, but I just can’t bear to do that so after my last sourdough bread baking session (which insisted that I feed my starter first so it was good and active), I found myself with a bowl full of starter that I didn’t really know what to do with. I covered it and stuck it in the fridge, thinking I’m sure I’ll want to bake more bread soon. BUT we’ve been baking a LOT of bread since I started this obsession and kind of the last thing we needed for the two of us was MORE bread. I started looking around for other uses for sourdough.

I found some really fun ideas out there … people like to use their excess sourdough to make pizza crust and muffins and puffy pretzels too. It was the intriguing pumpkin chocolate chip sourdough muffin recipe that led me to the cracker idea, though. There was a suggestion at the bottom of the post … a little recipe link … and once I’d seen the recipe for these sourdough bacon, rosemary and cracked peppercorn crackers, I kind of really just HAD to make them!

Except of course I couldn’t make them as the recipe directed … although the flavors sounded fabulous, I wanted a more heart healthy fat, you know, because I’m on a mission to lower my cholesterol, and besides February is American Heart Health Month. I decided to substitute my new fave fat: grass fed butter stepped in to take the place of the bacon fat.

Why grass fed butter?

Butter was once thought to be horrible for your heart, but we’ve since learned that butter (in fact, saturated fat in general) is not the devil it was once made out to be. AND grass fed butter in particular is loaded with vitamin K2, which decalcifies your arteries. Vitamin K works by modifying proteins, giving them the ability to bind calcium ions. Calcium tends to leach out of the bones (causing osteoporosis) and into the arteries (causing heart disease). By optimizing your intake of Vitamin K2, you can partly prevent this process from occurring. Studies consistently show that Vitamin K2 dramatically reduces the risk of both osteoporosis and heart disease. Butter also includes butyrate, a fatty acid which reduces inflammation. (BTW, another great source of vitamin K2 is egg yolks!)

What’s so great about these crackers?

Okay, enough about the grass fed butter, these crackers are crunchy and tasty and I think even a little bit cheesy tasting (although they contain no cheese). If you love everything bagels, you’re going to freaking love these crackers because they are loaded with everything bagel flavors, without the high carbs and sugar spike in your blood sugar that you get from eating white bagels. Yes, they contain wheat, so yes, there are carbs, but these crackers contain the GOOD kind of carbs: whole grains. Your body takes longer to digest whole grains so you get a more even source of energy … plus whole grains contain fiber, which binds to the cholesterol in your body and carries it out.

On top of that, there’s sourdough … so you get the benefits of probiotics when you munch on these yummy little crackers. Also, studies show that your body processes sourdough differently than regular bread. Something about the fermentation process makes your body absorb the calories differently, more slowly and evenly, so no “sugar spike”.

The other great thing about making your own crackers is there are no preservatives. Just whole grains (whole wheat, rye and flaxmeal), butter, a bit of salt, lots of seeds (including sesame seeds!), garlic and onion which not only taste wonderful, they are all good for your body.

What if you don’t have sourdough starter?

You can purchase sourdough starter, but it’s also really easy to make. All you need is flour, water and time. (Most of the time is just waiting time. It just takes a few minutes to get started.) Most people say it takes about 5 days to make sourdough starter, but you can use the excess starter they tell you to discard to make things like these crackers! I honestly didn’t follow all the directions when I made my starter … especially the discarding part. I’m all about trying to reduce my waste, especially when it comes to food. I sort of followed the directions from King Arthur Flour, except I used 3/4 cup water to 1 cup flour. Once I had a bubbly good sponge, which for me happened within a day, I took 4 oz of it, fed that bit, put my freshly fed starter in a loosely covered jar in my fridge and used the rest that they told me to discard to make bread. I don’t get why they tell you to throw it away! It’s just flour and water, people, with a little wild yeast and probiotics added. That’s PERFECT for making bread (or hey, why not crackers?)

BTW, you don’t have to “activate” or feed your starter before you make these crackers … you can take it straight out of the fridge and use it straight away. There’s an 8 hour wait time which totally gives the starter ample time to “wake up”.

You’ll need to plan ahead a bit, but this recipe is great for starting at night and waking up the next day and rolling the crackers out when you’re nicely rested and ready to roll! (literally)

I also want to note that you can use a cookie cutter (like my tiny heart cookie cutter) to cut out the crackers and then roll the scrap dough out (like pie crust) to cut again, but if you’re okay with square crackers, it’s MUCH easier and more efficient to use a pizza cutter to cut your dough into rectangles.

(BTW, grass fed cheese is also a good source of vitamin K2, so my favorite snack of cheese and crackers just became heart healthy! Thank you Kerrygold for feeding your cows grass and helping me on my mission to reduce my cholesterol.)

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IMPORTANT NOTE: It’s hard to determine the REAL nutritional content is based strictly on ingredients. The recipe analyzer doesn’t know what sourdough starter is, so for the above calculation, it’s only analyzing the initial amount of flour in the starter. Take this analysis with a grain of salt … actual nutritional content should be better because of the probiotics in the sourdough, but also varies depending on what type of flour you use to feed the starter. Also the recipe analyzer doesn’t know everything bagel seasoning, so I substituted sesame seeds. And I had a hard time figuring out how many servings this recipe makes because it makes a LOT of crackers.