Usually when hubby comes from work in the evening I will make something, he can munch on while drinking his favorite tea. One thing in the world he can’t live without is his tea; he will drink tea day and night. Usually I make onion vada, or ethaka-appam (sweet dish made of ripe plantain). Some time I make some dosas, upma or other breakfast dishes. Yesterday my culinary intuition kicked in suddenly to bake some savory dishes. So as usual I looked into the web for recipe of crackers. Earlier crackers according to me were only “Ritz cracker” we get in Wal-Mart. I always bought a big box of the Ritz cracker thinking that I am going to eat a lot. But it will remain sitting in my kitchen table for months after opening. I get bored very soon and after a few months get tossed into the trash. Other cracker I use is Graham crackers as crust for cheese cake (which my hubby loves). When I saw baked Nippatu in Redchillies I immediately wanted to try it. Later I came to know that Nippatu is very similar to a dish called Thattai which my mom used to make it. While I was In India, I never thought about baking or cooking, because Amma did everything for me. Here I became chef of different taste as I have no choice, because I don’t like to eat out. I stopped going out to eat after trying several Indian restaurants and not liking the taste at any of them.
Madhuram announced an egg less baking event with barley as the main ingredient. I would like to send a recipe for her event, and since she wanted egg less dish I thought about making a muffin, or a cake. Later I decided to bake some savory onion crackers using barely flour. I used the recipe from here. I substituted half of the flour with freshly ground barley flour. I made the crackers this way.
What you need
All purpose flour : 1 cup
Barley flour : 1 cup
Butter ( melted) : 4 tablespoon
Water ( warm) : 2 tablespoon
Red Onion( finely chopped) : 1 no
Sesame seeds : 4 teaspoon (I used black sesame seeds)
Baking soda :1 teaspoon
Canola oil : 1/3 cup
Red Chili powder : 1 teaspoon
Salt : 1 teaspoon or to taste
Sugar : 2 teaspoon
Coriander leaves( chopped) : 2 tablespoon
Curry leaves : 1 Sprig ( optional)
How I made
In a bowl mix All-purpose flour, barley flour, red onion, coriander leaves, curry leaves, salt, sugar, baking soda, sesame seeds, red chili powder and add oil and butter and mix well. The entire mixture become a big lump.
To this lump add warm water little by little and knead well about 2-3 minutes to form dough. Cover with a damp cloth and leave it aside for 30 minutes.
Pre heat oven to 325 F
Next is to roll out dough into thin circular disc as cookie dough. Since it is difficult to rolling out the dough with a rolling pin, I used a Ziploc cover and placed small amount of dough in between and fold and applied pressure to make thin sheet in between sheets. After achieving desired thickness around ½ inches I cut them using a cookie cutter to heart shaped discs.
Place the cut discs in cookie sheets lined with parchment paper or slightly greased with oil. Using a fork poke these discs so that they won’t puff while baking.
Bake the crackers to 25-30 minutes or until they are brown.
Cool it in wire rack and store in air tight container.
Enjoy these with cup of coffee or tea.
Preparation time: 1.25 hour
Yield : 33
Verdict : Good
Will you make it again: Sure I will
Swathi
That's a very neat idea Swathi. I too have baked RCs Nippatu and they taste so good. Nice idea of tyring it with barley flour. Thank you very much for sending it to the event.
ReplyDeleteHi Swathi,
ReplyDeletethanks for trying this out and letting me know and so glad you and your husband liked it. it is pretty addictive isn't it? Adding barley to this is pretty neat.