Raincoast Crackers

There is a special, (but somewhat expensive) brand of crackers that I learned to enjoy with my mom recently.  A friend shared a copycat recipe with me so we tried it out.  It was very successful (except that we had to bake the sliced crackers much longer than the recipe says), so much so that we looked at a package of a different flavor and then created our own version of that one.  This is the list of ingredients for what we did to make the apricot, orange, poppyseed crackers:

2 c. whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. agave
2 c. buttermilk
1 c. dried apricots, chopped into small pieces
1/2 c. chopped almonds
2 Tbs. poppy seeds
2 Tbs. orange peel
1/4 c. ground flax seed
1/4 c. sesame seeds (preferably a mix of tan and black)
2 Tbs. nutritional yeast

After making those two varieties, we felt confident enough to do even more experimentation.  Basically, it seems that you make some kind of dense whole grain bread, then slice it into very thin slices and re-bake those until they're crispy.  Here's the next recipe that we created.  We had this drinkable yogurt and I thought it would be a reasonable substitute for buttermilk (it was).

1 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. rye flour
1/2 c. buckwheat flour
1/2 c. wheat bran
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. ground flax seeds
1/4 c. sunflower seeds
1/4 c. pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
1/2 c. walnuts
1/4 c. each: raisins, dried cranberries, dried cherries
2 c. Siggi's drinkable yogurt (vanilla flavor)
1/4 c. maple syrup

Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes in 2 well-greased bread loaf pans.  Let the loaves cool fully in the pan.  When they're very cool, slice it as thinly as you possibly can.  Lay the slices out on baking sheets and bake for 15 minutes on one side, then take them out, flip them over, and bake for another 15 minutes.  Check them after that to see if they're crispy enough.  It took me another 5 minutes on each side before I was satisfied by their crispness.

By the way, this is what happens if you try to take the baked loaves out of their pans (REALLY well greased pans, I want to point out) before they get cool...

It definitely made it more difficult to slice nice looking crackers when the bottom of the loaf had been ripped off.