We used the cracker recipe in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food
, which has been one of my most-used cookbooks since I got it a little over a year ago. What it boils down to is this:- you mix flour, butter or oil, water, salt (and other things you might want--spices, nuts, etc.) in the food processor
- you roll out the dough into one big piece as thin as a cracker
- you score it with a knife to make it easily breakable into nice cracker shapes
- you bake it
- after it's cooled, you break the crackers off the big chunk
Here's the raw dough, scored with a knife:
And here's that same dough, baked--now a cute, crispy sheet of crackers:
Here's a chick sneaking cheese while the crackers cool: mozzarella, gouda, and a homemade herbed goat cheese, inspired by this. A random assortment, I know, but it's what we had in the fridge.
And here they are! Our imperfect but delicious crackers:
Making crackers from scratch is so worth the effort. The batch yielded about the quantity of crackers you'll get in one of those pricey specialty/organic boxes of crackers for a FRACTION of the price. And there's no comparing the taste of fresh, straight-from-the-oven crackers to those that have been sitting in a cellophane bag on a store shelf. Of course, the fact that I know exactly what is in them is also a bonus.
So my challenge to you for this weekend is to make your own crackers! I promise you won't regret it.
13 comments:
Ok this is awesome! I will def. have to try it b/c my kids are big snackers and this is so much better than Goldfish (though I do love those too - they remind me of Sunday school growing up). :)
Laurie B
OOH! I am so very tempted to try.
Question for you though, did you roll the dough onto the table and then place it on a baking sheet by hand? I just wonder if it was hard to lift such a thin piece of dough without it falling apart... I have a hard time lifting my dough when I make quiche crust and it isn't nearly as thin as the one you have here.
Nadia--I did, and it's MUCH easier to remove than pie crust. It's a really dense, hard dough, with an elastic (rather than crumbly) texture. I just floured the table really well beforehand, and then I carefully pried it up with a spatula to make sure I didn't rip it. I find pie crust nearly impossible to pick up without destroying (I've actually started making it directly in the pie pan), but this was not hard. I was very pleasantly surprised.
Ooh, yummy. Whenever I make crackers, they come out on the dry and abrasive side, but that may be the doing of using whole wheat rather than white. Sounds like a good cookbook--I love Mark Bittman, but I think I need to get rid of about a dozen cookbooks before I can justify buying another one!
Andrea--I'm assuming they'll be much more dry when we use wheat. I'm hoping to find that perfect sweet spot of enough wheat to make me feel like they're healthy, but enough white so they're not super dry. I'd also like to add crushed walnuts, parmesan, poppy seeds--things like that (though not all at once!)
That cookbook really is wonderful, by the way. I've yet to be disappointed with a recipe, and he does such a great job of telling you how to do everything step by step. I know what you mean about too many cookbooks though. I've been downsizing mine, and I'm much happier to now just have one shelf of cookbooks, all of which I actually use.
You had me at "easy". I actually hate buying crackers because of how fast my girls go through them (that's me being cheap again...), so I'm going to have to try this!
You continue to inspire and amaze me. Those look so yummy, and I do love "easy". I'll have to give homemade crackers a whirl.
btw, I thought you maybe acquired a new, if not slightly creepy, baby...then I realized Bojey's baby was sitting near your bookshelf!
LOVE IT!!! I want to do this!!! (pray that I have the energy- but since they look so easy it should be no problem!) I was waiting for this post from the last one you wrote. :-)
this recipe is also in his how to cook everything book in the bread section if i recall correctly. I LOOOOOOVE this cracker recipe and thank you for reminding me that I have it! so easy and so customizable....
Those look delicious.
http://swordsintoplows.blogspot.com
Those are the most beautiful crackers I have ever seen! I am not a cracker person, but my girls are and I would love to make these with them.
How cool, I have never even thought about making my own crackers. Just so happens, they're my weak spot. I have SOOOO many ideas floating in my head right now :) Thanks
I've been meaning to make crackers, but I have to find a good glutenfree recipe so I'm still working on it. I did just feature your ice garland over on my blog for my Thrifty Art Thursday post this week! We made one for ourselves and the kids just adored it. Thanks for the idea!
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