The Brod and Taylor sheeter appears to do a very good job sheeting dough for crackers. I took them down to the '1' setting, which I think is 1mm. I'm hoping that's not too thick.

There's a '0' setting but it seems to be really thin, it'll hold a piece of parchment paper. If I need them a little thinner than the '1' setting, I could put them on one or more layers of parchment paper, I did that with one batch of laminated dough as a test, and it worked reasonably well.

The thickness of the dough seems pretty uniform, which is what a sheeter is supposed to do.

I tried a couple of ways of squaring off the dough, folding it over like you would a laminated dough seems to work OK, but you have to set the thickness setting back a few notches and work back down. Folding the edges over to produce a rectangle and pressing them down a little seems to work just about as well, and is faster because you don't have to back off on the thickness as far, if at all. I also tried just stretching the corners so they were more square before moving down to the next thickness setting. That seemed to work fairly well, too.

But it might just be easier to trim off the scraps to get a rectangle and roll the scraps back out again. That's what I did for a second smaller tray of crackers.

After they were cut, I brushed them with some egg wash. Some of them I sprinkled pretzel salt on, some I left plain, and some I left plain but docked with a fork.

It might also be possible to brush the egg yolk on before cutting them, then flip it over so you get both sides coated. (I've seen that suggested as a way of brushing pretzel crackers with a baking soda solution, though the author warns that it is a bit messy.)

I separated them on the baking sheet, I'm not sure if that's really necessary. It might be enough just to cut them and leave them in place. Worth trying, I guess.

I'll post some pictures once they're out of the oven, but they smell good so far. I used the whole wheat pretzel recipe in the KAF Whole Grains book, but substituted some coarse rye meal for about 2/3 of the whole wheat flour.

I baked them for a total of about 15 minutes at 425, but the ones in the upper left corner look a little darker, I think that's the hot spot in this oven. If I like them well enough to do another batch, I may try the convection oven setting at 400.

My digital micrometer (from a beadworking store) says they're about 6mm thick after baking, but this is a yeasted dough, so I'm not surprised. The interior seems good, not dense but not really open, either. They're a bit crisper at the edges than in the middle, that may change as they cool.

They're about 1.75 inch (45mm) squares.

Here's the second tray (scraps rolled out a second time) before and after baking.

These are a bit thicker than the previous batch, averaging around 7.5 mm, but they sat for 20 minutes while the first batch baked, so they had some time to rise.

I don't think the docking made much difference.

I didn't bother to keep the underside of the cracker dough floured, so the dough stuck to the sheeter board, but I just rolled it up, like a cinnamon roll, and then unrolled it on the cutting surface. Easy-peasy.

The crackers are still a bit tough to chew today. Some of the ones that were thinner seemed easier, so perhaps this is just a question of getting them thinner, although allowing them to rise more so that they were airier inside might also help.

BakerAunt, what's been your experience?

I want to try carta di musica using the sheeter, for that the '0' setting might be best.