Lara and Tom from Sheboygan, WI (2018 Week 8: Biscuits)

Baker

Lara and Tom

Location

Sheboygan, WI

Baking Challenge

48 Crackers

Give your biscuits a name and tell us about your recipe.

Glacial Gardens Animal Crackers. We had guest bakers, Felix and Hugo, visiting us all the way from North Carolina this week, so we decided to have some fun with the shape of our biscuits. In doing a little background reading we discovered that "animal biscuits," aka animal crackers, originated in England in the 1800s – they seemed like a good fit for this challenge. Lara’s mom, Paulette, provided the recipe for whole wheat crackers, with just a handful of ingredients and maple syrup as the only sweetener. No eggs in the dough meant all the cooks in the kitchen were free to nibble extra bits as we cut out our animals. Hugo was the master of rolling the dough nice and thin, and he and Felix chose their favorite animal cookie cutters to build our menagerie.

Would you describe yourself as a rogue baker, or do you strictly adhere to the recipe?

We usually try to be precise when baking, although we have learned that there is wiggle room to make substitutions and reductions for the sweetener in most baked goods (we use our homemade maple syrup quite often). We are also learning to adjust bake times and temperatures according to the tendencies of a particular oven. This week we discovered that we needed to let the crackers bake a few extra minutes to get a good, crisp snap.

Tell us about how you added a Wisconsin twist to your creation.

Hugo and Felix got to explore the family farm, Glacial Gardens, during their visit to Wisconsin. Several of the cookie cutters we used feature animals the boys saw around the farm (though we had to include fun shapes like elephants, too 🙂 ). We used Glacial Gardens maple syrup, and we ground fresh whole wheat flour using a countertop flour mill, both of which gave the crackers great flavor. When our guest bakers became taste testers they gave rave reviews!

How did you do?

Rocked it.