Crackers, right? Delicious little crispy things that help make
peanut butter that much more civilized to eat at 12:30 am, or that hold hummus
so well and give it a bit of snap or add the perfect little pusher to your
summer beef salad. Something so
complicated and magical to make that the elves unionized, cornered the market
on boxes and boxes of them, and charged outrageous prices. And then to read the ingredients!
So here’s the plan:
find a recipe, made with ingredients that don’t have to come out of a
chemist’s magic box, make them at home, make them in the summer time when it is
a billion degrees and you don’t even want to turn on the oven, and then share
any resulting successes with Bella fans.
I found a cool 7 ingredient (actually it was a 6 ingredient,
and true to form; had to add something) recipe that took just a couple of tries
to get sorted out.
1.5 cups Semolina flour
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1 Tablespoon toasted sesame seeds (lucky #7)
2 teaspoons course sea salt
A whole bunch of grinds on the pepper mill -
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup water
Pasta machine for
fun-
Mix the two flours, the seeds, the salt, the pepper
together. Add oil, and mix until it
reaches that evenly distributed and nicely sandy feeling. Add water and knead for 5 minutes until you
get a nice elastic ball of dough. I then
cut it up by halves until I had a plate full of golf ball sized dough balls. Let them rest to finish hydrating the flours
for 30 minutes. 
Next step was all about the pasta machine. Roll it out to number 5/6 (7 was too thin). And for fun and because it is summer and
super warm – I tried cooking them on the bbq.
Fabulously successful! This is
also a great way to find the hot spots on your grill. At medium high it took me about 2 ½ minutes
on one side and about 1 ½ minutes after I turned them over to finish. If they still felt a little soft, I parked
them over on the side of the grill to finish (off the open flame). It was definitely a production of cranking
out crackers, flipping crackers, pulling cooked crackers, cranking out
crackers, flipping…you get the idea. May
I suggest using a timer? After they cooled a bit, I just snapped them
up to the size I wanted and bang done, Bob’s your Uncle and you are free of the
tyranny of cracker-head elves. 
Hard Work! Low Pay! Sign up here! Actually, we think Bella is a great place to work and we have had just the best luck finding fabulous people in the past. So, here's the scoop. Job duties include stocking inventory (most days), cleaning, merchandising, cash registering, quickbooks-ing, and taking great care of our customers. Retail experience is nice but not essential to the tasks. Preference will be given to those candidates who know their way around a kitchen. The position requires the skills and abilities to work independently. A professional appearance is required. (well, semi-professional. No high heels here at 5000 elevation).JPG)
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