graham cracker

[From GRAHAM FLOUR.]

Background

Graham crackers and related animal crackers are whole wheat crackers made with a special type of flour. They are slightly sweetened with sugar and honey and are sold in a variety of sizes and shapes. First developed in 1829, they remain a popular snack food, and millions of crackers are sold each year.

The development of the graham cracker is attributed to Sylvester Graham, an American clergyman. In 1829, he concocted the recipe for a cracker whose main ingredient was an unsifted, coarsely ground whole wheat flour. Touting his product as a health food, he produced and sold it locally. Over time, it became known the graham cracker. Due to its popularity and innovation, other bakeries copied his recipe and eventually developed methods for its mass production. Since then, graham crackers have been a popular snack food. They have also become an important ingredient in pie crust recipes.

From a recipe standpoint, animal crackers are very much like graham crackers. The primary difference between the two is the shape of the final product. Whereas graham crackers are typically square, animal crackers come in the shape of lions, tigers, camels, bears, and giraffes, to name a few. They were developed in England in the late 1800s and were initially imported to the United States. As their popularity grew, American bakeries began making them. A true innovation in the development of this product came from the National Biscuit Company, who packaged the crackers in a colorful box made to look like a circus wagon. This method of selling the product proved popular and spawned hundreds of variations on this theme. In the late 1950s, production technology improved, and the level of detail on animal crackers greatly increased.

Raw Materials

The recipe for graham crackers has remained essentially unchanged since its invention in 1829. The primary ingredients include whole-wheat flour, fat, and sugar. These, combined with other ingredients, provide the essential graham cracker characteristics.

Flour

The main component of most cracker recipes is wheat flour, which is obtained by grinding wheat seeds into a powder. Whole-wheat flour is composed of the three main parts of the wheat seed, the outer coat or bran, the germ, and the endosperm. The bran and germ are larger particles which add flavor, fiber, and color to the flour. The endosperm is responsible for the important baking characteristics. It is primarily composed of starch and protein, which when combined with water creates a mass, called gluten, that can be stretched and rolled without breaking. This property allows dough to be formed into various sizes and shapes.

The distinctive flavor and texture of graham cracker flour comes from the size of the flour particles used. For the correct taste, the flour must have the correct combination of small, medium, and large particles. If this combination is not right, the crackers will either turn out crumbly or have lumps.

Fats and oils

Fats and oils are another primary ingredient used in cracker manufacturing. They can be derived from a variety of plant and animal sources. Graham cracker recipes typically require hydrogenated vegetable shortening composed of soybean and cottonseed oil. Most of the naturally strong flavor of these oils is removed during the refining process. Butter can also be used. However, its flavor is retained during manufacturing.

There are many characteristics which make fats and oils important in graham cracker recipes. One characteristic is their insolubility in water. When water is added to flour, gluten is typically formed. But when fats and oils are present, they act as a barrier between the flour and water, and gluten formation is prevented. This "shortened" batter results in products that have a soft, crumbly texture. Using fats and oils improve the appearance of crackers and contribute to the taste.

Sweeteners

Graham crackers have a slightly sweet flavor. The primary sweetener is sugar, or sucrose, that is derived from sugar cane or sugar beet. It typically makes up about 5-15% of the recipe. Other sweetening ingredients used are dextrose, corn syrup, molasses, and honey. In addition to adding flavor, these ingredients have the extra benefits of improving the texture, affecting the color, contributing to the aroma, and preserving the product.

Other ingredients

Beyond the primary cracker ingredients, many other materials are added to give graham crackers their unique taste and texture. Cinnamon and salt contribute to the taste of the crackers. Whey is often added to ameliorate flavors without adding much flavor of its own. Leavening ingredients like sodium bicarbonate or sodium acid pyrophosphate give off carbon dioxide when mixed in the dough and are responsible for the air pockets throughout the cracker. Lecithin, which is derived from soybean oil, is used to make manufacturing easier by reducing the stickiness of the batter.

The Manufacturing
Process

Graham crackers are made through a series of steps which convert the raw ingredients into finished products. Important steps include ingredient handling, compounding, forming or machining, baking, post conditioning, and packaging.

Ingredient handling

• Most of the major ingredients like flour, vegetable shortening, and sugar are delivered to cracker manufacturers in large quantities and stored in bulk tanks. Depending on the ingredient, these tanks may be fashioned with special equipment to control their internal environments. For example, a liquid such as vegetable shortening must be stored at a specific temperature until it is ready to be used. If the temperature varies too much, the shortening could be difficult to pump or could adversely affect the dough. Therefore, this tank has controls which can maintain the appropriate temperature. Other tanks may have refrigeration capabilities.
• At the start of cracker production, ingredients are transferred to mixing tanks. Liquid bulk ingredients are transferred using metered pumps, which can move a specific quantity of material. Bulk solid materials are pumped via a method called pneumatic transfer, which involves fluidizing the powders with a stream of air and then pumping them with metered pumps. Minor ingredients that are supplied in boxes, bags, and drums are weighed and poured into the mixing tank by hand.

Compounding

• The graham cracker ingredients are mixed together in specific quantities as specified in the recipe. Cracker doughs are mixed with either vertical spindle mixers or high-speed horizontal drum mixers. The order that ingredients are added to the mixture is important. Typically the process begins with sugar, water, and shortening. This forms a mixture with a cream-like consistency. Next the remaining ingredients are added, and a "short" dough is obtained. This dough is allowed to set for two to three hours for the leavening agents to work.

Machining

• 4 Graham crackers are usually sold in two forms, as squares or as animal crackers. The dough used for both is ostensibly the same. In the machining process, the dough is delivered from a hopper onto a conveyor belt and rolled thin by a series of metal gauging rolls. The thickness of the sheet is reduced by each of these rollers. Some manufacturers stack multiple sheets on top of each other in a process known as laminating. They are rolled out further, allowed to relax, and then sent along a conveyor belt to the cutting machines.

• The edges of the dough sheets are cut smooth by rotary cutting machines, and excess dough is sent back to the hopper for reuse. When animal crackers are made, the sheet of dough is cut into the various animal shapes by cutting machines called stampers. These stampers, or rotary dies, have the animal shapes fashioned on them with intricate details. After this stage, sugar, cinnamon, or honey are applied to the top of the dough if the recipe requires it.

Baking

• The crackers are baked in a tunnel oven. The dough is first transferred to a metal conveyor belt and then moved through the oven, which can be 100-300 feet (30-90 m) long. Baking takes place in three stages called development, drying, and coloring. In the development stage the dough sets, taking on the size and shape of the final product. The greatest amount of water is lost in the drying stage. In the coloring stage, the dough is changed from pale white to a light golden brown. The amount of time a product spends baking is controlled by the speed of the moving conveyor belt. Animal crackers bake for as little as four minutes. Graham crackers bake slightly longer.

Post conditioning

• After the crackers come out of the oven, they travel on a series of conveyors to cool. At some point in this process they are flipped over and then flipped back to ensure that cooling is throughout. The total cooling time can be twice as long as the baking time.
• Depending on the recipe, other coatings can be put on the crackers after they have cooled. These include such things as icings, chocolate coatings, or sugar. These can be applied using either stenciling, extruders, or depositors. Excess toppings are removed using forced air and vibrating shaker devices.

Packaging

• The final step in the manufacturing process is packaging. Because of the fragile nature of some crackers, the packaging must be rigid and airtight. For square graham crackers, the crackers are cut and stacked individually and wrapped in flexible films. Animal crackers, which are less fragile, are typically packaged in a coated bag. Both types of crackers are then put inside boxes which are appropriately decorated to make the product appealing. These boxes are put into larger case boxes, which can be stacked on pallets and shipped to stores.

Quality Control

Quality control begins with the evaluation of incoming raw materials. Before they are allowed for use, these ingredients are tested in the Quality Control lab to ensure they conform to product specifications. Various sensory characteristics are checked, including appearance, color, odor, and flavor. Many other characteristics, such as the particle size of solids, viscosity of oils, and pH of liquids, are also studied. Each bakery relies on these tests to certify that the ingredients will produce a consistent, quality batch of graham crackers.

Various characteristics of each batch of final product is also carefully monitored to ensure that every graham cracker or animal cracker shipped to stores is of the same quality as the batches developed in the food laboratory. Quality control chemists and technicians check physical aspects of the crackers, including appearance, flavor, texture, and odor. The usual method of checking these characteristics is by comparing them to an established standard. For example, the color of a random sample is compared to a standard set during product development. Other qualities, such as taste, texture, and odor are evaluated by sensory panels. These are made up of a group of people who are specially trained to notice small differences in these characteristics. In addition to sensory tests, many specialized instrumental tests are also performed.

The Future

The trend in graham cracker products has been toward products which contain premium ingredients, are healthier for the consumer, or have unusual shapes. Graham cracker marketers have tended to tout organic ingredients in the recipes. Others have begun to use a low-fat recipe and make other "healthy" claims. Additionally, new flavors of graham crackers are constantly being introduced in the hopes that they will catch on and sustain sales over many years.

Where to Learn More

Books

Almond, N. Biscuits, Cookies and Crackers: The Biscuit Making Process. Elsevier Applied Science, 1989.

Booth, R. Gordon. Snack Food. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990.

Faridi, Hamed. The Science of Cookie and Cracker Production. Chapman & Hall, 1994.

Periodicals

Dornblaser, Lynn. "Everything they're cracked up to be. (new cracker products)" Bakery Production and Marketing, August 15, 1996, p. 26.

[Article by: Perry Romanowski]

This popular snack was touted as a health food in the 1830s by its creator, Rev. Sylvester Graham, a United States dietary reformer. It's a rectangular-shaped, whole-wheat cracker that has been sweetened, usually with honey. Graham-cracker crust is made from a mixture of finely crushed graham crackers, sugar and butter that is pressed into a pie pan. It's usually baked, but can simply be chilled before being filled.

Sylvester Graham (1794-1851), by the standards of his day, was a crackpot. In the early 1800s, when Americans believed good eating meant as much meat and fowl as one could consume, the fatter the better, Sylvester preached a diet that would do a 1990s nutritionist proud. The base of his food pyramid was whole wheat flour, coarsely ground and not sifted. He would allow bread made of this flour, provided the bread was not too fresh; it had to stand for at least twelve hours after baking. Graham's menu also included other grains, likewise coarsely ground, and vegetables and fresh fruits. To drink? Water, of course.

Grahamism and Grahamites flourished in the 1830s in the wake of popular lectures by Graham, a minister who was general agent for the Pennsylvania Temperance Society. Aside from the plain diet, Graham also, according to the Dictionary of American Biography, "recommended hard mattresses, open bedroom windows, cold shower baths, looser and lighter clothing...and cheerfulness at meals."

It was not through these lectures, however, or his books Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making and Lectures on the Science of Human Life, that Graham made his lasting contribution to American English. It was rather an invention some thirty years after his death, a cracker made out of Graham flour (1834), the coarse whole wheat flour he had prescribed, with a touch of sweetener added. In 1882 this graham cracker was touted as "easy of digestion." Aside from being wholesome, it had enough taste appeal to maintain its popularity to the present day.

Cracker (1739) is an American word too. Although cracker was known in England to signify a biscuit that is hard and thin, to this day the English prefer the generic word biscuit instead. So it is only in America that we have water crackers (1825), soda crackers (1830), and oyster crackers (1879), as well as the healthful and nutritious graham crackers.

Modern graham crackers fresh from the box

The graham cracker was developed in 1829 in Bound Brook, New Jersey, by Presbyterian minister Rev. Sylvester Graham. Though called a cracker, it is sweet rather than salty and so bears some resemblance to a cookie - digestive biscuits are the closest approximation. The true graham cracker is made with graham flour, a combination of fine-ground white flour and coarse-ground wheat bran and germ. Graham crackers are often used for making s'mores and pie crusts.

Contents 1 History 2 Modern use 3 Crust 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

History

Graham crackers were originally conceived of as a health food as part of the Graham Diet, a regimen to suppress what he considered unhealthy carnal urges, the source of many maladies according to Graham. Reverend Graham would often lecture about the adverse effects of masturbation, or "self-abuse" as he called it. One of his many theories was that one could curb one's sexual appetite by eating bland foods. Another man who held this belief was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of the corn flakes cereal.^[1]

Modern use

Many modern "graham crackers" are made of the refined, bleached white flour to which the Rev. Graham was implacably opposed. Some modern commercial graham crackers are no longer considered health food, but have remained popular as a snack food and breakfast cereal with greater amounts of sugar and other sweeteners than in the original recipe, and far less graham flour, often with no whole-wheat flour whatsoever. Cinnamon or chocolate may be added to enhance the flavor of the crackers. Technically, crackers are not really graham crackers unless they are made with graham flour, which is a hard whole-wheat flour in which the constituent bran, germ, and endosperm have been ground separately, the first two coarsely and the third finely. Cinnamon, not considered a true ingredient of graham crackers, was added for those who did not enjoy the bland taste of graham crackers, although it is argued by some connoisseurs that cinnamon has become standard-issue.

Crust

A graham cracker crust is a style of pie crust made from crushed whole-wheat crackers made from Graham flour, usually flavored and stiffened with butter or vegetable oil. It is the most common crust for cheesecakes. It is increasingly popular for use as a cream pie crust and is imitated by the Oreo-style crusts made from crushed black-cocoa cookies.^[2][3]

See also

• Graham Diet
• S'more

References

1. ^ The Destroying Angel: Sex, Fitness and Food in the Legacy of Degeneracy Theory, Graham Crackers, Kellogg's Corn Flakes and American Health History by John Mooney, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, 1985. ISBN 0879752777.
2. ^ http://www.sallybernstein.com/food/columns/zonis/cocoa.htm
3. ^ http://www.blisstree.com/chocolatebytes/make-your-own-oreos/

External links

• "Is it true graham crackers were invented to cure the dread fever of lust?" on The Straight Dope website
• Information on Graham Flour and recipes
• Bound Brook - Home of the Graham Cracker (describing Rev. Graham as an "eccentric Presbyterian minister" who developed the Graham cracker "to cure the dread fever of lust.")

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