Instructions

1. Soak the flax in a cup of water and leave it alone for an hour. It goes from loose seeds in water to a single sticky mass, and that mass is the binder for the whole cracker.
2. Stir the sunflower, sesame and pumpkin seeds through the gel with the Italian seasoning, largest seed first. Tipped in together, the sesame ends up packed at the bottom of the bowl.
3. Tip the mixture onto a baking paper-lined tray and press it flat with a wet palm. Wet hands are the trick here: a dry one pulls the gel up with it and leaves craters.
4. Season the surface with sea salt and pepper while it is still wet enough to hold them. Added after drying, they fall straight off into the tin.
5. Run the dehydrator at 46 °C for 3 hours, turning the slab over halfway. Both faces need the air, and the side against the baking paper stays soft until it is flipped.
6. Break the cooled sheet into crackers along whatever lines it wants to take. Pumpkin seeds make natural fault lines, and a hand-broken cracker looks better than a cut one.
7. A finished cracker snaps rather than bends and sounds hollow when tapped. If it gives at all, the seeds inside are still damp and the batch will go stale within days.
8. Keep them in an airtight tin at room temperature for up to a fortnight, and out of the light. Seeds are oily, and rancid seed oil is what you will taste first if they sit too long.