Rye and Seed Crackers and Baked Brie with Fig Preserves

I love melted cheese so much. Not like I wouldn't eat a wheel of brie on its own, but I prefer it baked with some sort of jam and nuts. It is always a crowd pleaser and so easy to make. If you want to impress your guests even more, make some homemade crackers to go with your baked brie. They are so easy to make and taste so much better than store bought ones. You can get creative with the nuts and seeds you put in it and the flours you want to use. 

I used whole wheat and rye flour for this recipe and thought it was the perfect combination. I even love them by themselves! They last about a week in a air tight Ziploc bag and the dough will also last a couple days in the fridge if you don't want to bake the whole thing all at once.

My sister and I love making cheese boards. We pride ourselves on a damn good board with a crap ton of cheese, meats, fruit, crackers, and good bread. The bigger the board and the more variety on the board, the happier we are.

This is also easy enough to make on weekdays for those "Wine Wednesday's" in front of the television. I'm completely okay eating all of this and calling it dinner.. with a good bottle of wine, of course.

INGREDIENTS

CRACKERS

• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup pepitas
• 1 tablespoon poppy seed, plus some more for topping
• 5 tablespoon sesame seeds
• 2 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 1 cup rye flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour (or all purpose flour)
• 2 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 egg white (for brushing on crackers before baking)
• Sea Salt (for topping)

BRIE

• 1 wheel of brie
• 1/2 cup fig jam
• zest of one orange
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS

1. In a spice grinder, pulse the sunflower and pepitas until they form a powder. Transfer the powder into your stand mixer bowl
2. In that same bowl, add in the poppy seeds, sesame seeds, rosemary, rye flour, whole wheat four, honey, oil, and water
3. Mix on low with a paddle attachment for 2-3 minutes. The dough will be very sticky.
4. Transfer the dough to a flour surface and separate it into 4 even pieces. It will be easier to roll out the dough in small batches, since the dough is sticky and hard to work with
5. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F and prepare a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
6. Roll out the dough on a well floured surface until it is 1/16th of an inch. You might need to flip the dough over a couple times and add more flour, so that it doesn't stick to your surface. 
7. Once your dough is rolled out, use a pizza cutter to cut into whatever shape you desire. I usually make them into rectangles. Repeat this process with all quarters of the dough. If you don't want to bake all the crackers, you can refrigerate the dough up to one week
8. When placing your crackers on the baking sheet, you can put them fairly close to each other, since they don't really spread out while baking
9. Brush your crackers with the egg white and sprinkle with sea salt and more poppy seeds
10. Bake for 20-25 minutes, flipping the pan half way through the cooking process
11. Once you remove them from the oven, increase your oven temperature to 350 degrees for the baked brie
12. While the oven is heating up, put your brie in a baking dish and top with your fig jam, orange zest, and walnuts
13. Bake for 20-25 minutes and serve immediately with your crackers