Crunchy Dog Cookies – Tails start to wag as soon as the pack see these
Crunchy Dog Cookies
Ingredients
4-1/2 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
3 Cups All Purpose Flour
3 Cups Cornmeal
1-1/2 Cups Steel Cut Oats
2/3 Cup Powdered Milk
2 Tablespoons Garlic Granules (optional) {Small amounts of garlic will not hurt the pups}
2 Teaspoons Salt
3-1/2 Cups Beef Broth (2 14.5 oz cans) – I use unsalted beef stock
1 Cup Vegetable Oil
2 Large Eggs
Directions
Preheat Oven to 300 degrees. Position oven racks to divide oven into thirds.
Use a very large bowl to mix the following ingredients together. Mix flours, cornmeal, oats, powdered milk, garlic and salt together. I use my hands to mix all of these together because of the large amount of ingredients.
In a medium bowl whisk together broth, oil and eggs.
Use a pastry blender to start to mix the liquid ingredients into the dry. If you don’t have a pastry blender you can use a large spoon. After you have a little more than half of the wet incorporated into the dry you will most likely have to finish the dough mixing by hand. I’m a true Southern cook so my hands go into everything that I make. As my grandmother used to say…. Your hands will always make everything taste better!
After you have mixed everything together throughly wash your hands and get ready for the fun part.
I don’t have a fancy marble dough table/stone so I use my counter top. Newer counter tops hold up just as good and do just as good a job as a fancy dough table/stone. Throw some flour onto your counter, you will have to play with the amount but don’t go to sparingly or the dough will stick to your counter and become a mess. Now that you have a good amount of flour on your surface dump the dough out of the bowl on top of your floured surface.
Once you dump the dough out you may need to use some additional flour on the dough to keep it from sticking to your hands and rolling pin. Roll out your dough to your desired thickness. I usually roll out to 1/2 inch thick as it’s a nice size to help with tooth cleaning.
Cut your dough into the desired size you want. You can use a cookie cutter, biscuit cutter, etc.
Because I make so many of these at a time I just grab my pizza cutter and cut away. The size I make are 2 inches by 4 inches. About the size of a standard store-bought bone but not as fancy.
Once you cut your dough into your desired size and shape, place them on a cookie sheet about 1/4 to 1/2 inch apart until your cookie sheet is full. Look at the backs of your cookies as you are loading the cookie sheet, if they are heavily covered in flour take a small brush and dust the excess flour off the backs of the cookies before loading them on your cookie sheet.
Once you have your cookie sheet loaded take a fork and poke holes in the tops of your cookies prior to baking.
Take your leftover dough and make it into a ball and roll out again until you have used all of your dough.
Load two cookie sheets into the oven at one time. Set the timer for 2 hours and let them bake. If your oven tends to burn things you might want to turn your cookie sheets and rotate them from one shelf to the other at about the 1 hour mark or sooner. You know your oven.
Take your cookie sheets out and load the next batch until you are finished.
Let the original two cookie sheets cool until you can handle the cookies by hand and then load them into an airtight container for use. I’m not sure how long they will keep because our pack is large and eat the entire batch in just about a week.
You should get about 80 cookies.
Tools needed
Measuring cups – wet and dry
Measuring spoons – dry
Pastry Blender
Rolling Pin
Very large mixing bowl
Medium mixing bowl
Fork
Cookie cutter, pizza cutter, etc. to cut your cookies to size
3 – 4 cookie sheets (mine are commercial size)