Hickory, dickory--Dock!

November 18, 2019

A while back, I talked about Dock, and how it is so visible (and still usable) in fall and winter fields. Making flour out of Dock is easy. Cut the brown seed stems and let them dry--strip off the seeds and dry them more in the oven on low heat--cool--and then put into a food processor or blender to grind into flour. It would be pretty difficult to separate the seed from the chaff, so don't: grind up the chaff along with the seed and congratulate yourself for eating lots of fiber. Dock flour is great in that you get a lot of "bang for your buck." In a half hour you can harvest a ton, and it doesn't take long to process.

Banana Bread made with 1/3 Dock Flour. Darker and drier than the standard recipe (though I may have skimped on the bananas). The Dock seeds add a delicious crunch, and with a little butter or margarine, delicious!

Now that I have the Dock flour, what can I make with it? As with many foraged flours, you can just use it to replace about 1/4 or 1/3 of regular or whole wheat flour in most recipes. Since it doesn't have gluten, Dock flour works best for baked goods that don't need much rising. Hence, my decision to try Dock Flour Crackers.

There are many basic cracker recipes out there on the internet; the one I chose was from thekitchn: recipe here. Pretty simple: 3 cups flour, 2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, ¼ c olive oil, 1 cup water. Roll out the dough; bake 12-15 minutes at 450 degrees. I used 1 cup white flour and 1/2 cup Dock flour.

The crackers came out OK: I should have used less water and rolled them thinner. They were substantial but fairly dry, similar to WASA crackers. They were very good with hummus--the spread's creaminess complemented the crackers' dryness.

But “pretty good” is faint praise--I knew I could do better!! I’m trying to move away from recipes that use mainly conventional ingredients, just substituting in a little bit of wild fare. I want to create foods that really take advantage of the wild ingredients, instead of just tolerating them (like the unpopular kid at the party). Dock is dry, and woodsy (maybe slightly bitter?). I wondered, how can I take advantage of Dock’s true nature?

In the next experiment, I decided to try two versions: savory and sweet. I mixed the dry ingredients, then separated them into two bowls. For the savory side, I used half olive oil and half sesame oil (I know, definitely not native local ingredients). I wanted to include a seed topping: sesame seeds had worked well in my first attempt, but how to incorporate more foraged ingredients?

I harvested a bunch of Queen Anne’s Lace (wild carrot) seed (it’s very easy to harvest a bunch), toasting them lightly in a pan. This drew out more of their fennel-like flavor and burned back their bristly-ness.

After rolling the dough out (I still used too much water), I pressed the Queen Anne’s Lace seeds into the surface, then sliced up the crackers up and put them in the oven.

For the sweet version: when you think of bitter and yummy, what do you think of? Chocolate, of course! And what goes great with chocolate? Coconut!! (Yeah, another very local foraged ingredient, I know.) For my oil, I used coconut oil, then dumped in about three TB of cocoa. Now the dough was a little drier. And then I got smart: Instead of using flour on the counter where I was rolling out dough, I used dried (unsweetened) coconut (a much finer grind than your typical sweetened coconut flakes). More

coconut powder and more cocoa went onto the surface whenever the dough got sticky. People: this move was Genius. The uncooked crackers were flipped over onto the baking sheet, making for a very nice coconut/cocoa-y surface. I wish I had done something similar with my savory crackers and rolled them out over a dusting of Dock flour and Queen Anne’s Lace seeds.

Verdict? Both kinds of crackers, the savory and the sweet, came out much better than the original recipe. The Dock/Cocoa/Coconut crackers were great with peanut butter, but still dry: I think their true calling would be soaking up melting vanilla ice cream.

I will keep experimenting—and I invite you to join me and let me know of your inventions! The savory crackers, I believe, would benefit from using all sesame oil, a bit less sugar, and a bit more salt. I’m wondering about coconut flour as a substitute for wheat flour for the Dock/Cocoa/Coconut crackers.

That might be my next experiment. . . . Or. . . . I’m very intrigued by the possibility of home-made cereal flakes. Look ahead for a future post! Don’t forget that Dock will still be standing out there, and available, well into the winter.