Ingredients:

1 cup sorghum blend (35% sorghum flour, 35% potato or cornstarch, 30% tapioca starch)
2 tbsp Expandex modified tapioca starch*
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp butter*
2 tbsp corn syrup*
1 large egg
1 tbsp sesame seeds, divided

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven toe 350°F.
2. In a food processor, combine the dry ingredients until blended.
3. Add the butter, corn syrup, egg, and 1 1/2 tsp sesame seeds. Pulse a few times to moisten the dough and then process until the dough forms a soft ball. Remove the dough and knead it with your hands until it is soft and smooth. Shape it into a flat disk.
4. On a flat surface, lay a sheet of parchment paper on a wet paper towel. Place the ball of dough on the parchment paper and lay a sheet of heavy-duty plastic wrap on top. With a rolling pin, roll the dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Remove the plastic wrap and cut the dough into 2 inch circles with a biscuit cutter. Place the crackers on the baking sheet at least 1 inch apart.
5. Sprinkle the remaining sesame seeds.
6. Bake 10 minutes or until the crackers look firm and slightly toasted.

I’ve been going through the 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes book by Carol Fenster and looking for recipes that I can make with the ingredients I can find in China. I’ve been able to find quite a few recipes, and so far, almost everything I’ve tried has turned out quite well!

This cracker recipe seemed pretty simple to do and I have (or can use) most of the ingredients except for Expandex modified tapioca starch, butter, and corn syrup. I substituted Expandex with regular tapioca starch, olive oil for butter, and honey for corn syrup. When making the dough, I found that the dough was too wet/sticky, so I added more sorghum blend (maybe around 1/4 cup?) until the dough wasn’t sticky and I was able to knead it. Instead of using parchment paper and heavy-duty plastic wrap to roll out the dough, I sandwiched the dough between two Silpats (If you don’t have a Silpat, it’s a MUST HAVE in the gluten-free kitchen. I have 3!). After cutting out maybe 20 crackers, I used the remaining dough to roll out breadsticks that are about 1/4-inch thickness.

Well, guess what? The crackers turned out quite well, a little on the saltier side, but the breadsticks were WONDERFUL!!! They both taste the same, but it’s so much more fun (and a novelty) to be eating gluten-free breadsticks! And if you sprinkle the breadsticks with crystal salt, it’s like pretzel sticks!

My husband gave the breadsticks a 9 out of 10! That means, I’ll definitely be making more breadsticks in the future! In the past when I asked him how things tasted, he always said “it’s good” being the nice, I-like-anything-I-can-eat person he is – the result of decades of deprivation from really good food. Or maybe he was afraid to say something didn’t taste good in fear that I’d never cook or make anything for him again. I could never tell how much he liked something, so I started asking him to rate every recipe from 1 to 10 — 10 being I can eat this everyday and 1 being I love you for making gluten-free food for me.